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Negative   /nˈɛgətɪv/   Listen
Negative

verb
(past & past part. negatived; pres. part. negativing)
1.
Vote against; refuse to endorse; refuse to assent.  Synonyms: blackball, veto.



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"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books



... lover of choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the wreck of an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be divined as we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when we read the epitaph on his tomb. To complete the mournful and tender impressions which seize the soul, on one of the ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac

... reverse. Indeed, a short march of three miles by the Ely's Ford, Haden's Ford, and Greenwood Gold Mines roads, none of which were held by the enemy, would have enabled Reynolds to strike Stuart in rear of his left flank, or seize Dowdall's clearing by a coup de main, and absolutely negative all Stuart's efforts in front of Fairview. Or an advance through the forest would have accomplished the same end. To be sure, the ground was difficult, and cut up by many brooks and ravines; but such ground had been, in this campaign, no ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... kind of negative praise, that needs more wary caution, by purposely giving strange advice and suggestions, and by adopting absurd corrections. For if he raises no objection but nods assent to everything, and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... things which have never been and never will be, there are some possible; or whether all that is not, all that has never been, all that will never be, was impossible. A famous dialectician of the Megaric Sect, named Diodorus, gave a negative answer to the first of these two questions and an affirmative to the second; but Chrysippus vehemently opposed him. Here are two passages of Cicero (epist. 4, lib. 9, Ad Familiar.): "[Greek: peri dynaton] me scito [Greek: ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... him to the field of battle. In consequence of Sir Arthur's neglect my grand-uncle was compelled to take the next boat back to England. There was a question asked in the Commons of the day about Sir Arthur's conduct. I do not know what the question was, but the answer was in the negative, though I am not quite sure what that means. In any case, my grand-uncle was a greater soldier than Wellington. My mother often heard ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... (a rather questionable moral, perhaps, but still a moral), so put his soul into it that the timbre of his voice was altogether too moving for our hostesses. Here are the ideal people: perhaps their ideal may be said not to exist and to be purely negative, but months of suffering have taught ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... broken down into while still retaining its identity, and an anion is a positively charged ion, or in other words, an instance of an atom in which there are more electrons than protons, resulting in a charge of negative electricity. An atomic anionizer is just what its name would imply: a device that morphs normal atoms into atoms with an extreme negative charge by emitting massive amounts, to the tune of many millions of moles, of solitary electrons into the ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... question came up for discussion, the Brethren frequently consulted the Lot. The method was to place three papers in a box, and then appoint someone to draw one out. If the paper was positive, the resolution was carried; if the paper was negative, the resolution was lost; if the paper was blank, the resolution was laid on the table. The weightiest matters were settled in this way. At one Synod the Lot decided that George Waiblinger should be entrusted with the task of preparing an "Exposition ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... each other. Miss Gale made a negative signal, and Fanny said, "By-and-by. This will do instead, for it is as like as two peas. Now ask yourself how this comes to be in the house, and set in pearls. Why, they are worth three hundred pounds. I assure you that the master of this house is fanatico per la musica; heard you sing Siebel ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... prizes. In the following term he won three. To recapitulate his outrages from that time to the present were a harrowing and unnecessary task. Suffice it that he is now a Regius Professor, and I saw in the papers a short time ago that a lecture of his on 'The Probable Origin of the Greek Negative', created quite a furore. If this is not Tragedy with a big T, I should like to ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... this, of course, is old stuff; even the photon-neutrino interchange has been known since the mid-'50s, when the Gamow neutrino-counter was developed. But now we come to what you have been so good as to christen the Sugihara Effect—the neutrino picking up a negative charge and, in effect, turning into an electron, and then losing its charge, turning back into a neutrino, and then, as in the case of metal heated to incandescence, being emitted again as ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper

... face was white and clean, except where it flushed into a most charming pink upon her smooth, cool cheeks." In this grasp of the element of things, this keen, clean, frank pleasure at color and odor and warmth, this candid admission of the negative of beauty, which is co-existent with and inseparable from it, lie much of his power and promise. Here is a man catholic enough to include the extremes of physical and moral life, strong enough to handle ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... knowledge of those classes of animals in which natural selection could act is even now very incomplete; and our knowledge of their past history is still more limited, so that we are not in a condition to prove a negative. But in such a case as this the onus of proof should surely lie on the other side. It is for those who would assert the theory to bring forward positive proof of it. There is, however, one point in Mr. Darwin's view of domesticated animals which tells against his theory. The cat remains ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... rate as regarded the protection of the Suez Canal. To this extent, de Freycinet and his colleagues were prepared to lend their assistance; but, despite Gambetta's urgent appeal for common action with England at that point, the Chamber of Deputies still remained in a cautiously negative mood, and to that frame of mind M. Clemenceau added strength by a speech ending with a glorification of prudence. "Europe," he said, "is covered with soldiers; every one is in a state of expectation; all the Power are reserving their future liberty ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... countenance of Miss Ogilvy's dying counsel, welcome and unexpected as light of the moon to a lost traveller on a cloud-clothed night. What had she told him to do? To resist Madame Riennes. He had tried that with lamentable results. To invoke the help of religion. He had tried that with strictly negative results; the Powers above did not seem inclined to intervene in this private affair. To appeal to the Pasteur. That he had not tried but, unpromising as the venture seemed to be, by Jove! he would. In his imminent peril there was nothing to which ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... Monroe County and there the trial was to take place. Miss Anthony then proceeded to stump Monroe County and every town and village thereof, asking her bucolic hearers the solemn conundrum, "Is it a crime for a United States citizen to vote?" The answer is supposed generally to be in the negative, and so convincing is Sister Anthony's rhetoric regarded that it is supposed no jury can be found to convict her. Her case has gone to the jurymen of Monroe in her own persuasive pleadings before ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... writer has rarely so many enemies as it pleases him to believe. Self-love leads us to overrate the numbers of our negative constituency. The larger portion of my limited circle of readers must be quite indifferent to, if not ignorant of, the adverse opinions which have been expressed or recorded concerning any of these Addresses or Essays now submitted to their own judgment. It is proper, however, to inform them, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Pulaski on the 27th, and on the same day cut the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad near Tullahoma and Dechard. On the morning of the 30th, one column of Forrest's command, under Buford, appeared before Huntsville, and summoned the surrender of the garrison. Receiving an answer in the negative, he remained in the vicinity of the place until next morning, when he again summoned its surrender, and received the same reply as on the night before. He withdrew in the direction of Athens which place had been regarrisoned, and attacked ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... commanded by an officer of the Confederate navy, in any of these cases there will be a sufficient setting forth as a vessel of war to justify her being held to be a ship of war; if all of these points be decided in the negative, she must be held to be only a prize, and ordered to ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... lacks push,—he'll never get there." Such are the trite summaries of man among men. Of all the inner territory of the man's soul, which had resolved him in its history to what he was, had left him this negative unit of life, his fellows were ignorant, as man must be of man. They saw the Result, and in the rough arithmetic of life results are all that ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... and then for a page or more is a discussion of the condition of British possessions in the East Indies, that "rich source of their commerce and credit, severed from them, perhaps forever;" of "the predatory conquest of Eustatia;" and of the "relief of Gibraltar, which was merely a negative advantage;"—all to show that "it seems scarcely possible for them much longer to shut their ears against the voice of peace." There is not a word in all this that is not quite true, pertinent, reflective, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... declining to vote. A motion that three members of the Opposition should enter the government was not so generally supported, eleven members, including Alexander Mackenzie and Oliver Mowat, voting in the negative. The Lower Canadian Reformers held aloof, and in the subsequent debate in the legislature, ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... cried. "Hold on a moment! This isn't what you want! You don't want a fight!" He paused for an instant; but he knew that no mere negative would hold them at that moment. They must be told what they did want. Just now he had learned the particular words that would carry, and he proclaimed them at the top of his voice: "What you want is ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... popular belief: "Il se frotta les mains et s'en alla bien content." When it came to ancient history, Sir George was undeniably fond of "the everlasting No." In the present case his skepticism seems on the whole well-judged, but some of his arguments savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. He thus strangely forgets that what we call autumn is springtime in the southern hemisphere (Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 511). His argument that the time alleged was insufficient for the voyage is fully met by Major Rennell, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... no longer heard in the kitchen; even the heavy-footed seemed to tread on air, and all around me appeared to be afraid of disturbing the slumbers of the dead. Never before, nor since, have I had occasion to feel how completely a negative may assume an affirmative character, and become as positive as if it had a real existence. I thought I could see as well as feel my sister's absence from the scene in which she had once been ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... development of the dynamo and its work in electric lighting and traction. It brought into harmony much fragmentary knowledge which had lain disjointed in the armoury of the physicist since Dufay in France and Franklin in America had investigated their theories of positive and negative frictional electricities, and had connected them with the flash of lightning as seen in Nature. Thus it became a fresh starting point both ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... Of [Greek: chraismein], Buttmann, Lexil. p. 546, observes that "it is never found in a positive sense, but remained in ancient usage in negative sentences only; as, 'it is of no use to thee,' or, 'it helps ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... know, is composed of atoms. These atoms are as far from one another, compared to their size, as the stars and planets of the universe. Each atom in turn is composed of electrons, negative particles of electrical energy, held in position about a fixed central nucleus of positive electricity known as a proton. I speak now of the simplest element. Most of them have many protons and electrons in their make-up. The space between these particles compared with ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... caparisoned, and most splendidly dressed. On their entering the tent, the princesses, who were seated in a recess concealed from view by blinds of gold wire, gazed eagerly at them; and she who had lost her bird inquired of the other two if either of them was their husband. They replied in the negative, remarking that he was of personal beauty, and dignified appearance, far superior to these princes. The three sultans, also, questioned their daughters on the subject, and received ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... ideas—she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to be let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned against the parapet, ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... by a quick and unequivocal answer in the negative; then, relaxing a little, she said more lightly, but with intent, 'I have always triumphed over difficulties all my life—I have ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... I replied in the negative, and then narrated the whole history of the spy-glass, the erasure of the name by Mrs. St, Felix, and the recognition ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... is what made up the essence of the movement of the epoch in the sixties. Turgenev with the instinct of genius saw through this fundamental movement in life and imaged it in living bright pictures with all its positive and negative, pathetic and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... explained later in the evening that writing is best produced in the dark, because dark is negative, light positive, and negative conditions are most ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... unexplained. To the very last, there are the various 'points of view' which the philosopher must distinguish in discussing the world; and what is inwardly clear from one point remains a bare externality and datum to the other. The negative, the alogical, is never wholly banished. Something—"call it fate, chance, freedom, spontaneity, the devil, what you will"—is still wrong and other and outside and unincluded, from your point of view, even though you be ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... New slang seems vulgar. It makes its way into use. In India the lingam symbol is so common that no one pays any heed to its sense.[39] This power of familiarity to reduce the suggestion to zero furnishes a negative proof of the power of the suggestion. Conventionalization also reduces suggestion, perhaps to zero. It is a mischievous thing to read descriptions of crime, vice, horrors, excessive adventures, etc., because familiarity lessens the abhorrent suggestions which those things ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... civil and polite person, and do hate giving pain when it can be avoided, I sent them up to Douglas Kinnaird,—who is a man of business, and sufficiently ready with a negative,—and left them to settle with him; and as the beginning of next year I went abroad, I have since been little aware of the progress of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... the Patriarchal Family.—It is well, however, to consider not only the negative but the affirmative side of the social inheritance of the patriarchal family, in which has grown up and developed the ideal of monogamic marriage. What did the father gain, intellectually and ethically, from that patriarchal order, and what did he ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... of the Constitution. The President's power of removal must be limited. In earlier times, these would have sufficed; but at that day the nature of the disease was such that nothing could reach it short of an organic change, which should give the weaker section a negative on the action of the government. Mr. Calhoun was of opinion that this could best be done by our having two Presidents,—one elected by the North and the other by the South,—the assent of both to be necessary to every act of Congress. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... Berry told the porter that he need not uncover, as he was travelling incognito, and asked if Mrs. Pleydel had arrived. Receiving a negative answer, he gave the man five marks and asked him to be very careful as to the way he lifted the cat's basket out of his wife's cab. Then he suffered himself to be conducted to the sitting-room which I had ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated—it is positive or negative or superlative—it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... the evening before the party in question. Col. Baker, despite the persistent and patient efforts on Flossy's part to show him the folly of his course, had insisted on obliging her to speak a decided negative to his earnestly pressed question. The result was, an unusually unpleasant domestic scene, and a general air ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... question doubtingly; indeed, from the expression of Santander's face, almost sure of receiving a negative ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... Sometimes she used a word in its wrong sense; she had one or two charming little phrases of her own: "What a purpose to?" instead of: "Why?" and sometimes a double negative. She rolled her r's ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... count. Church union is in many places an accomplished fact. This alone is a convincing proof of the want of grasp, of definiteness that exists in religious matters. We would refer our reader to the Chapter "Ploughing the Sands." To what extent this rather negative disposition will hasten the spreading of the true Faith, is difficult to state. Will it, as is evident in England, promote a movement of return to the Church or accentuate, as in the United States, indifference and unbelief, the future alone can tell. But, is it not ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... it[419]. However, this was circulated as wit for a whole winter, and I believe part of a summer too; a proof that he was no very witty man. He was an instance of the truth of the observation, that a man will please more upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive; by never offending, than by giving a great deal of delight. In the first place, men hate more steadily than they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... the panel of the door with the hilt of his sword, and Denis heard him breathing heavily as if after some great exertion; but there was no reply, and he tapped again, with the same negative result. Then with an angry snort ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... complexion and a long drooping nose—the nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin running almost to a point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct vice—heartless. Here was a man with a future before him—a man whose vices were all negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency. Here was a man who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If expediency prompted he could be a very depot of virtues; for his body, with all the warmer failings of that ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... negative point, however; and what should be carefully borne in mind is that the evidence as a whole leads to the conclusion that the Christians of the second and third centuries made use of the sign and venerated the figure of the cross without, as Dean Farrar ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

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

... forth. Rosalie did not attempt to analyse why not. Her repression, each time, of the suggestion that the letter should now be taken out and read again was not a deliberate repression. She merely had a negative impulse towards the action and accepted it; and so negligible was the transaction in her record of her thoughts, so mere a cypher in the petty cash of the day's ledger, that in the evening when, gone up to bed, the letter was at last drawn out and kissed ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... no doubt that animals communicate their impressions by an inarticulate voice. Common sense and the most superficial observations are opposed to the negative of this proposition. But when a canary bird warbles till it stuns us, or a nightingale sings in the shadows on the fine nights of June, can we follow and discover the significance of those modulations—now sharply cadenced, now slowly drawn out, and ending with a trill long and accurate enough ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... he said as he carefully removed the negative to a dark place, 'I have developed a considerable sense of quiet humour. You will find a large Gainsborough hat in that corner—might I trouble you to put it on for ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... quieted the House, and for a moment there was a dead silence. Then through the tense air there came a strange sound, and the President demanded silence from the galleries, whereupon the reporters rose and made a negative movement of the hand with two fingers upraised, pointing at the same time to the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... Robinson?" answered the keeper with great emotion. To which Booth replying in the negative, the keeper, after some tokens of amazement, cried out, "Well, captain, I must say you are the best at it of all the gentlemen I ever saw. However, I will tell you this: the lawyer and Mr. Robinson have been laying their heads together about you above ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... unprovided for, or the foolish fellow who groans in spirit over a protested bill returned upon the hand which he 'set' to it, merely for the convenience of acquaintance, and who has never thought of stamped paper since—such are two of the negative monetary associations which checker life; of course, their number is legion. The man who found his fairy gold transmuted into oak leaves, experienced a decided monetary sensation; but not more so than fell to the lot of many a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... mighty fine in the doctor's new runabout, driving the high-stepping bay, natty in a "brand-new" tan harness—the first Hattie had ever seen. He asked her to come with him for a drive, and again her mother's nipping negative influenced her decision against the pleadings of a ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... was not a suitable place for her. But she had no friends nearer than New Orleans. I asked myself whether I ought not to abandon the raft, and take passage in a steamboat; but I had not money enough to pay the passages of the party, and I was obliged to answer the question in the negative. But I could pay Emily's fare, and place her in charge of the officers of some boat. I concluded to adopt this course at the first large town we reached, where a steamer would be likely ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... should it? If it did we should doubt whether the love were true. Our own private belief is that the course of true love is always uncommonly rough, but collective human wisdom has seen fit to put the idea in the negative form. So ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... condition; true, the affections of the husband were divided—but they jointly catered for one man instead of two! It is said that they courted with flowers: an authenticated fact, proves that the female occasionally possessed a negative. Roomata (Bet) rejected the addresses of Trigoonipoonata (Jack); but she learned the worth of his affection. She was crossing a river, and became ill: he sprung to her relief, and carried her safely to ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... Indoors Gunther seemed negative, outdoors he became godlike. The Elliots possessed a little Norwegian sleigh they had brought from Europe. It was swan-shaped, stood on low wooden runners, and was brightly painted in the Norse manner. This Gunther found ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... his System of Moral Philosophy, page 211, says "He who detains another by force in slavery, is always bound to prove his title. The slave sold, or carried into a distant country, must not be obliged to prove a negative, that he never forfeited his liberty. The violent possessor must, in all cases, shew his title, especially where the old proprietor is well known. In this case, each man is the original proprietor ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet

... I have classed these two means of architectural effect together, because the one is in most cases the negative of the other, and is used to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light; recess alternating with roll, not only in lateral, but in successive order; not merely side by side with each other, but interrupted the one by the other in their ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... all who knew her, would clear her of censoriousness: that it gave her some opinion, she must needs say, of the people, that he had continued there so long with me; that I had rather negative than positive reasons of dislike to them; and that so shrewd a man as she heard Captain Tomlinson was had not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... top to bottom of Roman society negative forces replaced positive forces. Self directed labor gave place to slavery; participation in productive activity yielded to parasitism; productivity was subordinated to destructivity; the spirit of independence was ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... of this negative criticism and asked his evangelists to give him more substantial food, they put him on some exoteric doctrine calculated to appeal to a young imagination by its poetic or philosophical colouring. The catechumen ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... fallacy boldly, and ask ourselves whether Amelia is or is not as good as Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones, we shall I think be inclined to answer rather in the affirmative than in the negative. It is perhaps a little more easy to find fault with its characters than with theirs; or rather, though no one of these characters has the defects of Blifil or of Allworthy, it is easy to say that no one of them ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... answer the question in the negative, by sticking out his jaw and throwing his head a little backward. To his surprise the mate returned his gaze a ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... genius—thou shalt see me again at Philippi."[9] "Well, then," replied Brutus, without being discomposed, "we shall meet again." Upon this the phantom vanished; when Brutus, calling to his servants, asked if they had seen anything; to which they answering in the negative, he resumed his studies. 24. Struck with so strange an occurrence, he mentioned it to Cassius, who rightly considered it as the effect of an imagination disordered by vigilance and anxiety. 25. Brutus appeared satisfied with ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... seems to have become a positive magnet in the fall; the forge and anvil of the sun have had their effect. In the spring it is negative to all intellectual conditions, and drains one ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... these new views of the origin of species. And while the distinguished originator of this theory is entitled to our highest respect for his scientific researches, yet it should not be forgotten that the most conclusive evidence brought forward by him and his adherents is of a negative character, drawn from a science in which they do not pretend to have made personal investigations, that of Geology, while the proofs they offer us from their own departments of science, those of Zooelogy and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... in an earlier book, the beauty of Paradise itself, too great to be directly told, is, like the splendour of Pandemonium, conveyed to us by the most perfect of those negative similes which, forced upon Milton by the narrow bounds of his story, are perhaps the most distinctive of all the glories of Paradise Lost. It is too long to quote in full: but a few lines may be given: and they must include the first four, one of which has just {170} been quoted, verses of such ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... as well as any one in the profession, was perplexed in the present situation as to the course of true wisdom? Incredible as it may seem, it was Adelle who during this time of doubt gave her aunt strength to resist much bad advice. Her influence was, as might be expected, merely negative. For after that single deliverance of opinion she made no comment on all the discussion and advice. She seemed to consider the question settled already: it was this tacit method of treating the guardianship as ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... negative, and the judge then made a brief summing-up, and the jury, without retiring, returned a ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... dipped, but I hope not a wick-ed candle." It is said that upon another occasion, after the return of Mr. Slidell from a foreign trip, he was asked by Miss Fairlie whether he had been to Greece. He replied in the negative and asked the reason for her query. "Oh, nothing," she said, "only it would have been very natural for you to visit Greece in order to renew early associations!" Many years thereafter Priscilla Cooper, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... ages of four and twenty, often following some childish malady, and it requires the greatest care and most nourishing food to counteract its pernicious effects. The victim of interstitial keratitis is never strong, and, although a blood test may show a negative condition, any serious illness may cause the ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... that the less a person has inside him of culture and imagination the more he wants outside him of the upholstery of life? I think it is true; and if it is, then the vacancy of Annalise's mind may be measured by the fact that what she demanded of life in return for the negative services of not crying and wringing her hands was nothing less filled with food and sofas and servants ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... 'Yes' or 'No,'" said Dorothy, never dreaming that his answer would be in the negative, for on the week that she had first come to Gray Gables he had said: "I must introduce you at once to Alice Lee, who lives across the way. She is a lovely, quiet girl, and I know you will like her." And Dorothy had liked ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... comment on the pathetic Funeral Oration of Bossuet. We have no grounds for asserting that the married life of Madame de la Fayette was unhappy, except through the inadequacy of a husband whose best qualities seem to have been of a negative kind. During the fifteen years which preceded the death of La Rochefoucauld her friendship for him was the centre of her existence. She seemed to bear about with her some secret grief; something remained veiled from other friends than ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... there is nothing specially English in Ivanhoe, but only an attempt to delineate Normans and Saxons before the final blend was formed, an Englishman may, perhaps, claim at least impartiality if he accepts the positive part of Lockhart's judgment and demurs to the negative. Although the worst of Scott's cramps were past, he was still in anything but good health when he composed the novel, most of which was dictated, not written; and his avocations and bodily troubles together may have had something to do with those certainly pretty flagrant anachronisms ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... playfulness would seem to condone the fact that her mother found so little need of help in "bearing" the burden of her regret and of her self-reproach. But, allowing for that fact, Imogen's gravity was more than negative. It confronted him like a solemn finger laid on firmly patient lips; he felt it dwell upon him like solemn eyes while he shook hands with Mrs. Upton, whom he had not seen since the morning ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... actions confirmed it, for they approached divers persons of their acquaintance as if they had business of a confidential nature. The invariable result of these mysterious negotiations, however, was a negative shake ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... he can adduce no evidence. It was a curious intellectual experience to listen day after day to the lectures of Oken, while following at the same time Schelling's courses, where he was shifting the whole ground of his philosophy from its negative foundation as an a priori doctrine to a positive basis, as an historical science. He unfolded his views in a succession of exquisite lectures, delivered ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... out from the Bible your charge that piracy is a crime. I know not a word from the first of Genesis to the end of Revelation where piracy is once condemned. But I pass this, and, waiving my clear logical rights, undertake to prove the negative, and to show that the Bible does, most explicitly, both by precept and example, bear me out in my assertion, that piracy is not necessarily, and always, and amidst all circumstances, a sin. WHAT GOD SANCTIONED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, AND ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... their property conditions or their nerve, it is certain that a new spirit was generated. Great obstacles were overcome and determination was invincible. We were forced to act broadly, and we reversed the negative policy of doing nothing and owing nothing. We went into debt with our eyes open, and spent millions in money for the public good. The city was made safe and also beautiful. The City Hall, the Public Library, and the Auditorium make our ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... difficult to accomplish, and not altogether effective. The bullets still scattered more or less like a shotgun charge. Mr. Kincaid's score more than doubled his. Mr. Kincaid always shot the best he could; and entered a grave negative to Bobby's ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... railroad that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald negative and affirmative answers ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... without the intervention of Parliament. It thus authorized both the past acts of the Salandra Ministry and its future course. The measure, undebated, was voted on secretly. And it is significant that of more than five hundred Deputies present only seventy-two voted in the negative. Of these seventy-two who voted against the Government, some were out-and-out neutralistas, and some few were Socialists who had the courage of their convictions. The great majority of the Giolittians must have voted for war. ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... The negative came again, apparently fiercer than before, almost like an explosion indeed. But still there was a hollow ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... carriage; by a rigid expression of features; by a hard, severe intonation of voice; by set speeches of contempt for poverty and rags, and rhapsodical braggadocio about rank and breeding. My father's pride had nothing of this about it. It was that quiet, negative, courteous, inbred pride, which only the closest observation could detect; which no ordinary ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... Teeny McFarlane developed an unexpected obstinacy. She did not suggest that the young man was to be included in any of the future parties; indeed, she answered the direct question decidedly in the negative; no, there was no use trying to include anybody ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... observations of a negative character upon the object with which these preparations were made. I do not think it necessary to discuss the questions you have raised. But the result of these preparations, carried on with great secrecy, has been that the British Empire has been compelled to confront ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... been 'scarcely a week in Old Aberdeen when the Lord Provost of the New Town invited me to drink wine with him, one evening in the Town Hall;' and presented him on October 8th, 1781, with the freedom of the city. No negative inference can be established from the contemporary notices in the Aberdeen Journal over the visit. Every paragraph is contemptuous in its tone; and till October 4th no notice is taken of the honour, when 'a correspondent says he is glad to find that the city ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... to him by donatioun of the Governour, with a charge to the said Toune to obey him as thare lauchfull Provest. Whareat, not only the said Lord Ruthven, but also the toune, being offended, gave ane negative ansuer, alledging, That such intrusioun of men in office was hurtfull to thare priviledge and fredom; which granted unto thame free electioun of thare Provest from year to year, at a certane tyme appointed, quhilk ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... in man than the mere breath of his body. In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described only by negative characters: without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why then—and the case is not peculiar to myself—have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described only by negative characters; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why, then, and the case is not peculiar to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory? ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... wanted here," he cried in a commanding voice. And they all moved away meekly, led by M. Pichon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Their services proved to be unnecessary, for the result reached by the Conference was negative. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... illusory side of our life and insanity may be seen in another way. All illusion has as its negative condition an interruption of the higher intellectual processes, the due control of our mental representations by reflection and reason. In the case of passive illusions, the error arises from our inability to subordinate the suggestion made by some feature of the present ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... eighth precepts of the Decalogue. To concentrate in one word all that is to be observed regarding these essential elements of a social state, the sacred text confines itself to proclaiming, in an absolute mode, their inviolability, therefore adopting the negative or prohibitive form. It is desired to prevent and forbid every arbitrary act, and every unjust attempt, directed to deprive the legitimate possessor of, or to restrict and in any other way to disturb him in, the full, free, and exclusive enjoyment ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... there's nothing to be said." Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter which Warburton had written in answer to a pamphlet addressed "To the most impudent Man alive[981]." He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet. The controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke; and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... Minos he asked me with a smile whether I had brought my fiddle with me; and, receiving an answer in the negative, he bid me get about my business, saying it was well for me that the devil was ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... First, negative individuality. Second, the imperfect form of a verb. Third, the ablative form of a noun signifying a portion of the ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... development is generally ascribed to the protection afforded by such segregated districts. But protection alone is only a negative force in the life of a people; it leaves them free to develop in their own way, but does not say what that way shall be. On the other hand, the fact that such a district embraces a certain number of geographic features, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... that the book to which I have alluded, like most other modern books on Biblical criticism, was altogether negative; was possessed too often by that fanaticism of disbelief which is just as dangerous as the fanaticism of belief; was picking the body of the Scripture to pieces so earnestly, that it seemed to forget that Scripture had a spirit as well as a body; or, if it confessed that it had ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... profanities or seek to shatter the shrines, there is always something about him which suggests that in a sweeter and more solid civilisation he would have been a great saint. He would have been a saint of a sternly ascetic, perhaps of a sternly negative type. But he has this strange note of the saint in him: that he is literally unworldly. Worldliness has no human magic for him; he is not bewitched by rank nor drawn on by conviviality at all. He could not understand ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... overrate the perfection of the geological record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage. In all cases positive palaeontological evidence may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown. We continually forget how large the world is, compared with the area over which our geological formations have been carefully examined; we forget that groups of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... the communists and the anarchists; for no one is so willing to divide as he who cannot lose by division. To the man who has a plot of ground which he calls his own, division doesn't appeal with any but negative force. Neither should it, until all available lands are occupied. Then he must move up and make room for another man by ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... he could answer in the negative. He really did not know the man, and did not want to, though it certainly seemed strange that he should ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... cousins, without being in the least intimate with either. Indeed, of the two he preferred, perhaps, the silent, solid Cayley to the more volatile Mark. Cayley's qualities, as they appeared to Bill, may have been chiefly negative; but even if this merit lay in the fact that he never exposed whatever weaknesses he may have had, this is an excellent quality in a fellow-guest (or, if you like, fellow-host) in a house where one is continually visiting. Mark's weaknesses, on the other hand, were very plain to the eye, ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne

... having ignored the whole subject. Half-castes she instinctively despised. For India and the Indians she had little real sympathy; and the rising tide of unrest, the increasing antagonism, had sharpened her negative attitude to a positive dislike and distrust, acutely intensified since that evening at Anarkalli, when the sight of Lance and her stepfather, sitting there at the mercy of any chance-flung missile, had stirred the slumbering passion in her to fury. For one bewildering moment she had ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... dissipation was the billiard-table. His theory of success was founded on common sense: Take care of your health, avoid dissipation, shun any and all danger, volunteer for nothing, do only what you are compelled to do, shift all possible work on somebody else's shoulders, preserve a purely negative record, and—you are bound to rise to the highest grades in the army. It must be admitted that the laws of promotion are admirably calculated to foster just such a line of argument, and that Whaling's "head was level." Now, though wrathy at Blake, he saw at once that ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... the coast and inland. A Burwash woman told Mr. Egerton that as a child, after saying her prayers, she was put early to bed with the strict injunction, "Now, mind, if the gentlemen come along, don't you look out of the window." The gentlemen were the smugglers, and not to look at them was a form of negative help, since he that has not seen a gentleman cannot identify him. Another Burwash character said that his grandfather had fourteen children, all of whom were "brought up to be smugglers." These would, of course, be land smugglers—Burwash ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... individual woman of their acquaintance whom they suspect of entertaining such a longing. They must wish and not wish; they must not give, and certainly must not withhold, encouragement—and so it goes on, each precept cancelling the last, and most of them negative.'[1] ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... Colonel instead, and intercepted the path of the bath-chair. He was nearly run over, but stood his ground, and in a perfectly firm voice asked the Colonel if there was any news in the morning papers. With the Colonel's decided negative ringing joyfully in his ears, he went home again, and locked himself for the second time into ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... their heads, and murmured an answer in the negative, as each man looked round and appealed to his fellow; when a noise was heard without, and a man was heard to say that he wanted ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... convent walls, without disturbing the monk, swaying his girdle, or making his robe tremble. The alcalde, under one pretext or another, will deny you to-morrow what he grants you to-day; not a mother will let her child go to your school, and the result of all your efforts will be simply negative." ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... innocent or legitimate, that gives the first place to the calls and duties of daily life, is inconsistent with a strong faith and close intercourse with the spiritual world. "We look not at the things that are seen"—the negative side needs to be emphasised if the positive, "but at the things which are not seen," is to become natural to us. In praying, faith depends upon our living ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... only excuse a refusal by saying that you are hindered by the affairs of closer friends, or by cases more important or previously undertaken, quit you with hostile feelings, and are one and all disposed to prefer an insincere promise to a direct negative from you. C. Cotta, a master in the art of electioneering, used to say that, "so long as the request was not directly contrary to moral duty, he used to promise his assistance to all, to bestow it on those with whom he thought it would be most advantageously invested: ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the statement in the last paragraph of the above citation with nothing but a direct negative. If I know anything at all about the results attained by the natural science of our time, it is "a demonstrated conclusion and established fact" that the "fourfold order" given by Mr. Gladstone is not that in which ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... not seen is taken into consideration, because it is a negative fact, as well as that which is seen, because it is a positive fact, it will be understood that neither industry in general, nor the sum total of national labour, is affected, whether windows are broken ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... contradiction to hitherto observed facts. That the phantasy of the German folk mind drew to itself the pale ghostly light of the moon and could reckon from it all sorts of wonderful things, proves nothing to us." I can only say here that ten negative cases signify nothing in the face of a single positive one and a thousand-fold experience undoubtedly represents a certain connection between the light of the full moon and the most ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... expressly stipulated with Gen. Patterson, that he was not to do so; and when, notwithstanding such stipulation, he was called upon for that service, he positively refused, although threatened with confinement. Besides, both Moultrie and Ramsey assert he did not serve with the British; and as far as negative proof can go, this should be conclusive. But the fact that he bore arms with the British is not charged against him; his accusation was, "being at his own request received as a British subject." Then Col. Hayne neither came within the letter, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... all this, there is the watch; the watch is very important. It may be negative, it is true, but it is nevertheless very convincing. The rope and the twine and the fish line were positive evidence. Not evidence that the murderer owned the farm or farmyard perhaps, but evidence that the articles in question were at that farmyard a considerable time; evidence ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... guess we'll move on," said Davidge. As conversation, it was as unimportant as possible, but it had a negative historical value, since it left Marie Louise unconvinced of her inability to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... apartment, with his mind probably full of robbers, for he had a naked rapier in his hand, which still looked formidable, though rust had somewhat marred its shine.—What he had heard at entrance about lighting a fire, had changed, however, the current of his ideas. "No—no—no," he cried, and each negative was more emphatic than its predecessor-"The gentleman shall not have the trouble to put on a fire—ugh—ugh. I'll put it on myself, for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... harm was severe, but long and careful nursing accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even and unvaried by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion which had once corresponded to his overflowing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its former ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... even without such evidence. I think that in such cases, we must look chiefly to the historical testimony of facts; and you will forgive me for saying that I think your arguments are based upon presumptive evidence, negative evidence, and the evidence of appropriateness—all of which, however valuable, must tumble to the ground before one single fact. You notice that Archbishop Ussher doubted the Epistle to Polycarp. But why? simply because its style (not having been altered ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... etc., have the falling circumflex, and all negative assertions of doubled meaning will have the rising. Doubt, pity, contrast, grief, supposition, comparison, irony, implication, sneering, raillery, scorn, reproach, and contempt, are all expressed by the use of the wave of the circumflex. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... nerve structures as liberations of energy or discharges, are familiar to us all, has adopted and extended Laycock's doctrine, which he designates as "one of inestimable value," and has urged the importance of Monro's doctrine of negative and positive states in cases of insanity, using the term "insanity" in an exceedingly wide sense. He has pointed out that Anstie and Thompson Dickson have also stated the doctrine that so-called "exaltation of faculties" in many morbid states is owing ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... disappointments. My failures have been illustrative of the fact that the electric bath is no more a panacea for all ills than any other remedial agent. Applicable as it is to a great variety of pathological conditions, it meets with many where it is destined to have negative or at best imperfect results. Far from discouraging me, however, failures have served to inspire me with fresh ardor to seek for light, and to persevere in my efforts to establish on the basis of statistical truth, the therapeutic merits of the ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... is, or should be, enough to negative all arguments in favour of Home Rule. The agitators say that Ireland is decaying from political causes, while all the while this Ulster town is getting richer and more powerful and influential. While the people of Cork are begging the Viceroy to please to do something for their port, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... Circumstances did not favor his becoming a Virginia teacher, but between his eighteenth and twenty-third years, he made several expeditions into the Southern States as a Yankee peddler, with rather negative financial results, but with much enlargement of his information and improvement of his rustic manners. Mr. Alcott was rather distinguished for his high-bred manners and, on a visit to England, there is an amusing incident of his having been mistaken for some member ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach



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