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Problem   /prˈɑbləm/   Listen
Problem

noun
1.
A state of difficulty that needs to be resolved.  Synonym: job.  "It is always a job to contact him" , "Urban problems such as traffic congestion and smog"
2.
A question raised for consideration or solution.
3.
A source of difficulty.  Synonym: trouble.  "What's the problem?"



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"Problem" Quotes from Famous Books



... in my hand, while Mr. Mellowtone had that of our other horse. We were ready to start; but the problem of reaching the river path without disturbing the Indians did not seem so easy of solution as at first. We intended to make a circuit around the drunken thieves; but I found the underbrush was so thick that a passage with the horses ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic

... th' doctor's taste is that he has included Milton's Arryopatigica, if I have th' name right. This is what ye might call summer readin'. I don't know how I cud describe it to ye, Hinnissy. Ye wudden't hardly call it a detective story an' yet it ain't a problem play. Areopapigica is a Greek gur-rul who becomes th' iditor iv a daily newspaper. That is th' beginnin' iv th' plot. I won't tell ye how it comes out. I don't want to spile ye'er injymint iv it. But ye'll niver guess who committed th' crime. It is absolutely unexpicted. ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... industrial disease, and we have therefore concerned ourselves with the examination of industrial remedies, factory legislation, Trade Unionism, and restrictions of the supply of unskilled labour. It may seem that in doing this we have ignored certain important moral factors in the problem, which, in the opinion of many, are all important. Until quite recently the vast majority of those philanthropic persons who interested themselves in the miserable conditions of the poor, paid very slight attention to the economic aspect of poverty, and never dreamed of the application of economic ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... an idealist like so many Englishmen. But I am only a practical statesman. The problem of vice is a problem of government. No law can abolish it. It is for us statesmen to study how to restrain it and its evil consequences. Three hundred years ago these women used to walk about the streets as they do in London to-day. Tokugawa ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... Peyster and Matilda did not speak of money at first; but it was constantly in both their minds as a problem of foremost importance. Their failure to buy fresh outfits, as they had told Mrs. Gilbert they intended doing, thus supplying "baggage" that would be security for their board, caused Mrs. Gilbert to regard them with hostile suspicion. Matilda saw eviction in their landlady's penciled ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... strangely-assorted characters that make up this charming play. This harmonious working together of diverse and opposite elements,—this smooth concurrence of heterogeneous materials in one varied yet coherent impression,—by what subtile process this is brought about, is perhaps too deep a problem ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... of the "Coquet" had been seventy-two hours on the bridge, and he was nearly asleep as he walked. In trying to get to his berth he fell face foremost, and slept on the cabin-floor in his wet oilskin suit. When he woke he had a nastier problem than ever, for his compasses were gone, and the ship had a dangerous "list." However, he soon bethought him of a tiny pocket-compass which he had in his state-room. Working with this, and managing to get a sight of the sun, he contrived to get within ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... go, Hand; and wait a minute, until I think it out." Agatha sat up and pressed her palm to her forehead, straining to put her mind upon the problem at hand. "Go for a doctor first, Hand; then, if you can, get some food—bread and meat; and, for pity's sake, a cloak or long coat of some kind. Then find out where we are, what the nearest town is, and if a telegraph station is near. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... it was yours, which is not altogether probable—and we have been turning its light upon our own experience, in what we should not so much call self-celebration as self-exploitation. One uses one's self as the stuff for knowledge of others, or for the solution of any given problem. There is no other way of getting at the answers to ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... difficulty in arrangement encountered by them. How to reconcile the two headings of subjects and nations, groups of objects and groups of exhibitors, the endowments and progress of different races and the advance of mankind generally in the various fields of effort, was, and is, a problem only approximately to be solved. It was yet more complicated in 1851 from the compression of the entire display into one building of simple and symmetrical form, instead of dispersing certain classes of objects, bulky and requiring special appliances for their proper display, into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... iron and steel that I learned in Britain was the necessity for owning raw materials and finishing the completed article ready for its purpose. Having solved the steel-rail problem at the Edgar Thomson Works, we soon proceeded to the next step. The difficulties and uncertainties of obtaining regular supplies of pig iron compelled us to begin the erection of blast furnaces. Three of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... for the year 1914 in his address (Melbourne, p. 18)[1] told us that the problem of the origin of life, which, let us remind ourselves, in the 1912 address was on the point of solution, "still stands outside the range of scientific investigation," and that when the spontaneous formation of ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... This ballad is inserted, not for its merit, still less for its authenticity, but for the problem of its puzzling history. Scott certainly got it from the mother of the Ettrick Shepherd, in 1801. The Shepherd's father had been a grown- up man in 1745, and his mother was also of a great age, and unlikely to be able to learn a new-forged ballad by heart. The ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... assistants, was sent South to lay out the freight railroad, to erect the dumping-pier, and to strip the five mountains of their forests and underbrush. It was not a task for a holiday, but a stern, difficult, and perplexing problem, and Van Antwerp was not quite the man to solve it. He was stubborn, self-confident, and indifferent by turns. He did not depend upon his lieutenants, but jealously guarded his own opinions from the least question or discussion, and at every step he antagonized ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... seriously how you are preparing for it in these wild days? Look at society around you, and ask yourselves: Whither is our "PROGRESS" tending—Forward or Backward—Upward or Downward? Which way? Fight the problem out. Do not glance at it casually, or put it away as an unpleasant thought, or a consideration involving too much trouble—struggle with it bravely till you resolve it, and whatever the answer may be, ABIDE BY IT. If it leads you to deny God and the immortal destinies of your own souls, and you ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... face at once a look of recognition, as if in this tangent of the judge he saw an old problem. He merely sighed and answered, "Who knows?" The words were spoken in a deep tone that gave them an elusive kind ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... circumstances, Sandys necessarily devoted his main energies after 1621 to the problem of tobacco, the only marketable staple the colony had as yet produced. It was an old problem, but one now filled with new difficulties. In earlier days, when it had been hoped that tobacco might ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... anything for her, and often she found him watching her with wondering eyes. In her heart she could not believe that the boy had run away because he was tired of living at the Rectory. She felt sure there must be some other reason, and often she puzzled her brain trying to solve the problem. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... answered Hippy. "No, Emma Dean, an artesian well would be no burden to carry at all if one were able to solve the problem of how to carry it. All the makin's are right here, too. Hi, why didn't you bring a medium-sized artesian well with you! I am amazed that you would neglect to find a way to bring ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower

... provide the means to furnish such an education as he ought to have, is what puzzles me," continued Mrs. Smiley, pausing in her needle-work to study that problem more closely, and gazing absently at the face of her guest. "Will ten years more of school-teaching do it, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... each other's faces, wondering how the problem could be solved; and while we did so the ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... "I can't help thinking I was born in the wrong age. All this scrabbling around, searching everywhere for suitable planets. Back when the Universe was younger, there were lots and lots of planets to colonize. Now the old problem of half-life is taking its toll, and we can't even hope to keep up with the birth rate any more. If it weren't for the occasional planets like that one up there, I don't ...
— They Also Serve • Donald E. Westlake

... with 'T' in last week's 'Bulletin'," said Mitchell, after cogitating some time over the last drop of tea in his pannikin, held at various angles, "about what they call the 'Sex Problem'. There's no problem, really, except Creation, and that's not our affair; we can't solve it, and we've no right to make a problem out of it for ourselves to puzzle over, and waste the little time that is given us about. It's we that make the problems, not Creation. ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... contrary, I have a confident expectation that, in proportion as those objections are looked in the face, they will fade away. But, however this may be, it would not become me to argue the matter with those who understand the circumstances of the problem so much better than myself. What do I know of the state of things in Ireland, that I should presume to put ideas of mine, which could not be right except by accident, by the side of theirs, who speak in the country of their birth and their home? ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... intention of making a problem out of the matter, constantly as her mind dwelt upon the future. Senator North had told her once that problems fled when the time for action began. She supposed that one of two things would happen after her return to Washington: great events would absorb ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... contemplation, the centre of comprehension from which he worked, the aspect under which he viewed the universe of his interest. There is no reason to rest content with Coleridge's application of the epithet 'myriad-minded,' which is, at the best, an evasion of a vital question. The problem is to see Shakespeare's mind sub specie unitatis. It can be done; there never has been and never will be a human mind which can resist such an inquiry if it is pursued with sufficient perseverance and understanding. What chiefly stands in the way ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... at each other for a while with countenances expressive of much perplexity. Barbican appeared to be the least self-possessed of the party. It was a complete turning of the tables from the state of things a few moments ago. The problem was certainly simple enough, but for that very reason the more inexplicable. If they were moving the explosion must have taken place; but if the explosion had taken place, why had they ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... of facing the most difficult form of the problem of amateur staging, let us suppose that this play is to be given in a parlor or hall, without platform, without proscenium arch or curtains, with the walls, floor and ceiling of such material and finish that no nails may be driven into them, and that the depth of the stage is only nine ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden

... passages referring to the soul of Jesus are de princip. II. 6: IV. 31; c. Cels. II. 9. 20-25. Socrates (H. E. III. 7) says that the conviction as to Jesus having a human soul was founded on a [Greek: mystice paradosis] of the Church, and was not first broached by Origen. The special problem of conceiving Christ as a real [Greek: theanthropos] in contradistinction to all the men who only possess the presence of the Logos within them in proportion to their merits, was precisely formulated by Origen ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... years; Dr. Grant, for fifty-nine; the Rev. Joseph Williamson (Wilkes's chaplain) for forty-one years; while the Rev. William Romaine continued lecturer for forty-six years. The solution of the problem probably is that a good and secure income is the best promoter of longevity. Several members of the great banking family of Hoare are buried in St. Dunstan's; but by far the most remarkable monument in the church bears ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the members are responsible. This is a point we must insist upon. There is certainly a real antinomy which is difficult to reconcile between this dual egoism of exclusive and concentrated love and social solidarity or human altruism. The problem is not insoluble, but we must admit that ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... warming the observatory—an urgent necessity, since he found it impossible to manipulate delicate magnetic instruments for three or four hours with the temperature from -25 degrees F. to -30 degrees F. The trouble was to make a non-magnetic lamp and the problem was finally solved by using one of the aluminium cooking pots; converting it into a blubber stove. The stove smoked a great deal and the white walls were soon besmirched ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... that dwell in the Prussian memory are perhaps none of his greatest, but were of a kind to strike the imagination. They both relate to what was the central problem of his life,—the recovery of Pommern from the Swedes. Exploit First is the famed "Battle of FEHRBELLIN (Ferry of BellEEN)," fought on the 18th June, 1675. Fehrbellin is an inconsiderable Town still standing in those peaty regions, some ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... I am saying does not rest on my own conclusions alone. In the year 1912 the then Chief of the General Staff told me that he and the General Staff would like to investigate, as a purely military problem, the question whether we could or could not raise a great army. I thought this a reasonable inquiry and sanctioned and found money for it, only stipulating that they should consult with the Administrative ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... of railroad telegraphs which is in use on all the railroads of the West and Northwest owes its existence to General Stager. The telegraphs and railroads have interests in common, and yet diverse, and the problem to be solved was, how to secure to the telegraph company the general revenue business of the railroad wires, and at the same time to enable the railroad companies to use the wires for their own especial purposes, such as the transmission of their own business ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... do with Jasper Grinder was a problem which none of the boys knew how to solve. They were exceedingly sorry that he was among them, but as it would be impossible to send him off alone in that deep snow, they felt that they would have to make the ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield

... one who knew him, "is a problem and a riddle—a problem worthy of the study of those who delight in exploring that labyrinth of all that is hidden and mysterious, the human heart; and a riddle to himself and others. He is a wit and a humorist of a high order; of keen sagacity and shrewdness in many other respects than in ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... body could scarcely be called a living one, but who, nevertheless, possessed a fund of knowledge and penetration, united with a will as powerful as ever although clogged by a body rendered utterly incapable of obeying its impulses. Valentine had solved the problem, and was able easily to understand his thoughts, and to convey her own in return, and, through her untiring and devoted assiduity, it was seldom that, in the ordinary transactions of every-day life, she failed to anticipate the wishes of the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was seated there cross-legged, in a sort of wooden box; a pretty child, with a fine colour, but who has been in this state from his infancy. The women seemed very kind to him, and he had a placid, contented expression of face; but took no notice of us when we spoke to him. Strange and unsolvable problem, what ideas pass through the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. Her dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... gardens. It is possible that the ancient inhabitants of this place made their agricultural lands in the same way. But why should they seek such spots'? Surely the country was not so crowded with people as to demand the utilization of so barren a region. The only solution suggested of the problem is this: We know that for a century or two after the settlement of Mexico many expeditious were sent into the country now comprising Arizona and New Mexico, for the purpose of bringing the town-building people under the ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... mentioned, the question is often asked, why was it necessary to treat so famous a historic site as an archeological problem at all? Isn't the story finished with the accounts of John Smith's adventures, the romance of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, the "starving time," the Indian massacre of 1622, Nathaniel Bacon's rebellion ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... It had been hanging on the attic wall for a half-century, so that the back was split in twain, the sound-post lost, the neck and the tailpiece cracked. The lad took it home, and studied it for two whole evenings before the open fire. The problem of restoring it was quite beyond his abilities. He finally took the savings of two summers' "blueberry money" and walked sixteen miles to the nearest town, where he bought a book called "The Practical Violinist." The supplement proved to be a mine of wealth. Even ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and it was after eight o'clock...! What a disaster...! I was dumbfounded, and having cursed and upbraided the negligent porter, I had to think what I could do. The first difficulty was that the stage-coach ran only every second day, but that was not the major problem, which was that though the regiment had paid for my seat because I was on duty, they were not obliged to pay twice, and I had been stupid enough to pay for the whole journey in advance; so that if I took a new seat it would be at my own expense. Now at this time stage-coach fares were ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... this august company, whose work it was to set things right, Eudoxia Pence felt smaller than ever. What were her imponderable emanations of goodwill and good intention when compared with the robust masculinity that was marching in firm phalanxes over solid ground toward the mastery of the great Problem? She drooped visibly. Little O'Grady, studying her pose and expression from afar, wrung his hands. "That fellow will drive her away. Ten to one we shall never see her profile here again!" Yes, Eudoxia was feeling, with a sudden faintness, that the Better Things might after all be beyond ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... have been arguing the pros and cons of a ticklish problem. There are two courses to me. I can either bribe you, or leave you to your own devices. The latter method implies the interference of the police. I dislike that. Helen would certainly be opposed to it. I make the one thousand into five; but I want ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... Farmer Miles; and this house"—he pointed to his dwelling—"is my homestead; and there are two young ladies belonging to your school lying fast asleep at the present moment in my wife's kitchen, and they has given me a problem to think out. It's a mighty stiff one, but it means life or death; so of course I have, so to speak, my knife in it, and I'll get the kernel out afore I'm many ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... the heads of the six other highest families in Persia, were using their utmost efforts to bend this monster weapon in vain, the king emptied goblet after goblet of wine, his spirits rising as he watched their vain endeavors to solve the Ethiopian's problem. At last Darius, who was famous for his skill in archery, took the bow. Nearly the same result. The wood was inflexible as iron and all his efforts only availed to move it one finger's breadth. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... tabs on the trail, though he realized that if there arose any knotty problem that Tony could not solve, his own knowledge would ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... Travers said. He seemed in no way surprised, and his expression was that of a man waiting for the explanation to a problem ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... John Turnell Austin, now of Hartford, Conn., took out a patent for an arrangement known as the "Universal air-chest." In this, the spring as opposed to the weight is adopted. The Universal air-chest forms a perfect solution of the problem of supplying prompt and steady wind-pressure, but as practically the same effect is obtained by the use of a little spring reservoir not one hundredth part of its size, it is questionable whether this Universal air-chest, carrying, as it ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... has so represented the image of time, the part that time plays in his book? The problem was twofold; there was first of all the steady progression, the accumulation of the years, to be portrayed, and then the rise and fall of their curve. It is the double effect of time—its uninterrupted lapse, and the cycle of which the chosen stretch ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... presently we found a well—a shallow hole, 7 feet deep, and 2 feet 6 inches in diameter, entirely surrounded by high spinifex. Why there should ever be water there, or how the blacks got to know of it, was a problem we could only guess at. Everything looked so dry and parched that we were in no way surprised at finding the well waterless. Prempeh had been very unwell lately, refusing to take what little feed there was to be got. A dose of sulphur and butter was administered, poured warm down his throat ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... student who employs scientific method is inevitably brought to consider problems belonging to these diverse fields of thought. A study of nervous mechanism and organic structure leads to the philosophical problem of the freedom of the will; questions as to the evolution of mind and the way mind and matter are related force the investigator to consider the problem of immortality. But these and similar subjects in the field of extra-science are beyond its sphere for the very ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... late now, Duke; and, to tell the truth of myself, not even you can make me other than I am. My uncle's life to me was always a problem which I could not understand. Were I to attempt to walk in his ways I should fail utterly, and become absurd. I do not feel the disgrace ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... by the tide-flow of the ocean of Infinity, know about the workings of the Will in obedience to which, as some of us believe, that tide ebbs and flows through the uncounted ages of Eternity, and over the measureless expanse of Infinity? Faced with such a colossal problem as this, must we not all confess ourselves to be but as children and fools, since we do not and cannot see even half of the work, but only an immeasurably tiny fragment of it? For this reason I feel ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... in handy. But this night business rather stumps me. I don't quite see my way to get around that. Of course I could use an ordinary searchlight, but that doesn't give a bright enough beam, or carry far enough. It's going to be quite a problem and I've got to ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton

... farming and employs 65% of the work force. The majority of the population does not have ready access to safe drinking water, adequate medical care, or sufficient food. Few social assistance programs exist, and the lack of employment opportunities remains the most critical problem facing the economy. ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... remarkable experience of the West Indies, to be seriously considered in the settlement of our American problem, that the islands which abolished slavery the most summarily and entirely succeeded the best after emancipation. Half-freedom, both there, and in Russia during the last year, has proved a source of jealousy to the freedman and of annoyance to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... became corded and knotted as he put his whole mental energy upon the problem. Harry watched them a little while, and then strolled over to the other window, where St. Clair was looking ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... determined to offset as far as they could the ideal of self-governing communities in self-contained environments. The collisions and failures of concave democracy, where men spontaneously managed all their own affairs, were before their eyes. The problem as they saw it, was to restore government as against democracy. They understood government to be the power to make national decisions and enforce them throughout the nation; democracy they believed was the insistence of localities and classes upon self-determination ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... to fail, what would become of us with a deficit of a hundred millions every year? Without a doubt no time must be lost in filling up a void so enormous; and that can be done only by great measures. The plan I have formed appears to me the one that can solve so difficult a problem. Solely occupied with this great object, which demands enormous labor, and for the accomplishment of which I would willingly sacrifice my existence, I only beg your Majesty to accord to me, until I have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... bees were—have been constructing their cells with just such sides, in just such number, and at just such inclinations, as it has been demonstrated (in a problem involving the profoundest mathematical principles) are the very sides, in the very number, and at the very angles, which will afford the creatures the most room that is compatible with the greatest ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... visa versa, we should get nearer level an all be better for it. If we could nobbut get ovver that waikness ov worshipin a chap for what he has raythur nor for what he is we could simplyfy th' social problem. ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... absence. There will, of course, be no occasion to go into full details. You would tell the story of the confusion that arose as to the children, and say that Edgar had received some information which led him erroneously to conclude that the problem was solved, and that he was not my son, and that therefore he had run away so as to avoid receiving any further benefits from the mistake that had ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... distinctively and strongly Scots, a translation from some more elegant murmur in another language? She who had so many tongues, had she left out that in which she had been born, the language of her childhood and of her country? This problem is only considered by the historians when it is required to prove that a letter must be forged because it is apparently first written in Scots. There is also a very great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... works is stylistic; a technical preoccupation stands them instead of some robuster principle of life. And with these the execution is but play; for the stylistic problem is resolved beforehand, and all large originality of treatment wilfully foregone. Such are the verses, intricately designed, which we have learnt to admire, with a certain smiling admiration, at the ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from Mr. Croyden. "And did you ever think how easily we can produce it? Within the space of a second we can start a blaze. A fire was quite another problem for our forefathers who lived long before matches were invented. Think back to the time when people rubbed dried sticks together to make a spark; or later when they were forced to use flint and matchlock. It meant no end of work to capture that first light, and even then ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... down the receiver and paced the room thoughtfully for a moment or two. Although his own troubles were almost over, the main problem before him was as yet unsolved. The affair with the Gallaghers was, after all, only an off-shoot. It was the mystery of Lenora's abduction, the mystery of the black box, which still called for the exercise ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... wondered where they all came from. Apparently they do not breed here. Although there were thousands and thousands of birds, we could find no flamingo nests, either old or new, search as we would. It offers a most interesting problem for some enterprising biological explorer. Probably Mr. Frank Chapman will some day ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... reference to the law of the land and the verdict of sworn men. But these are just the weightiest points on which personal freedom and security of property rest; and how to combine them with a strong government forms the leading problem for all national constitutions. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... time in speculation," said Frank at last, "more especially as it does not look as if we can get any nearer to solving the problem in that way. The thing to do now is to get at the ivory and that as quickly as possible. If that man is the forerunner of a band that means to attack us, it is all the more reason that we should ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... be established among such a noble and generous people as the Spanish, will be a difficult problem for posterity to solve. It will be more difficult still to explain how such a Tribunal could exist for more than three hundred years. Circumstances favored its establishment. It was introduced under the pretext of restraining the Moors and the Jews, who were obnoxious to the Spanish ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... longer, but a Painter's Layfigure, playing truant this day. From the necessities of Art comes his long tile-beard; whence his leaden breastplate (unless indeed he were some Hawker licensed by leaden badge) may have come,—will perhaps remain for ever a Historical Problem. Another Saul among the people we discern: 'Pere Adam, Father Adam,' as the groups name him; to us better known as bull-voiced Marquis Saint-Huruge; hero of the Veto; a man that has had losses, and deserved them. The tall Marquis, emitted ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... land question, it calls up some awkward reflections when its history is contrasted with recent and passing events in Ireland. So long as the conquerors in Roumania endeavoured to solve the problem, their efforts were unavailing. At the Convention of Balta-Liman between Russia and Turkey, where 'coercion' was coupled with 'remedial measures,' an ineffectual attempt was made to ameliorate ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... has been made since the Tokyo Economic Summit called for increased effort on this front. The World Bank is giving this problem top priority, as are some other donor countries. The resources of the consultative Group on International Agricultural Research will be doubled over a five-year period. The work of our own Institute of Scientific and Technological Cooperation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... history. As something like 90% of the days in the year have, during the course of centuries, been allotted to some saint or other, it is easy to see how this section of the Breviary has encroached upon the Proprium de Tempore, and this is the chief problem that confronts any who are concerned for a revision of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essential to the problem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the panel may, or may not, be required; but the vertical limit of surface must be expressed; and the art of bas-relief is to give the effect of true form on that condition. For observe, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... attention, not of the Catholic alone, but of every thinking man, be he Christian or non-Christian, and which surely calls for some explanation that lies beyond and above that of the ordinary phenomena of history. The only possible satisfactory solution of this problem is the one so concisely, yet so simply, set forth in the ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... as they take hold in the fine, loose, rich soil, and you may have the other sports. And when you have grown tired of their monotony, come back in summer to even the smallest garden, and you will find in it, every day, a new problem to be solved, a new campaign to be carried out, a new victory ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... off, and felt that the hour of my departure from Egypt had come, so I left quietly. Instead of A (Ismail), who was a good man, you have B (Tewfik), who may be good or bad, as events will allow him. B is the true son of A; but has the inexperience of youth, and may be smarter. The problem working out in the small brains of Tewfik is this: 'My father lost his throne because he scented the creditors, I may govern the country as I like.' No doubt Tewfik is mistaken; but these are his views, backed up by a ring of pashas. Now look at his Ministry. Are they not aliens to Egypt? They are ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... The problem of memory also does not bring any difficulty, for the stream of consciousness being one throughout, it produces its recollections when connected with a previous knowledge of the remembered object under certain ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... (produced by a diseased state of the nervous system), which have been known to exist—as in the celebrated case of the book-seller, Nicolai, of Berlin—without being accompanied by derangement of the intellectual powers. But Mr. Rayburn was not asked to solve any such intricate problem as this. He had been merely instructed to read the manuscript, and to say what impression it had left on him of the mental condition of the writer; whose doubt of herself had been, in all probability, first suggested by remembrance of the illness ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... for the establishment of State institutions offering work to the indigent will never solve the problem of want, and all attempts that have hitherto been made in that direction have either ended in failure or met with ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... Britain, and though we know that London was situated on a river which also had a Welsh name, we do not know directly on which side of that river it stood, and have nothing for it but to apply to the problem what a great authority has described as an historical imagination, and try if we can find a sufficient number of geographical or topographical facts to reduce the problematic side of the questions involved; and ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others. What this security ought to be, is the great problem to be solved. Will it be sufficient to mark, with precision, the boundaries of these departments, in the constitution of the government, and to trust to these parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit ...
— The Federalist Papers

... to begin where I have left off and do better. The requirements are thoughtful and well-studied selection before your brush touches your canvas; a correct knowledge of composition; a definite grasp of the problem of light and dark, or, in other words, mass; a free, sure, and untrammelled rapidity of execution; and, last and by no means least, a realization of what I shall express in one short compact sentence, that it takes two men to paint an outdoor ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... been sitting up in bed, the better to wrestle with the problem of her exact opinion of Billy Andrews. Now she fell flatly back on her pillows, the very breath gone out of her. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the Italian army it is necessary to examine the Italian-Austrian frontier. Austria's problem was one only of defense. Her warning had been ample and when war was declared she was prepared to the last detail. Being the challenged party hers was the choice of weapons, and she had equipped herself with an almost impregnable line of fortifications. The grievance was Italy's, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... to have a maid, but she had refused until other changes should be made in the establishment. There seemed so much to alter that she felt bewildered. A household of elderly menservants presented a problem with which she knew she would find ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... the electric button that controlled the lights in the little apartment, and lay down in the darkness to think out her problem of the new life that ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill

... problem," O'Donnell said harshly. "I'm not interested in what the thing is—I want to know what can destroy it. They'd better give me permission to use ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee

... we have gay hopes of our Buddhistic brethren; but how will it be when they begin to quarter the Dragon upon the Stars and Stripes, and buy up all the best sites for temples, and burn their joss-sticks, as it were, under our very noses? Our grasp upon the great problem grows a little lax, perhaps? Is it true that, when we look so anxiously for help from others, the virtue has gone out of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... to be seen to but the great problem had been solved and all were elated. The main work accomplished, Colonel Howell and the young men retired to the cabin, where, as soon as the excitement over Paul's victory had somewhat subsided, Roy ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... More, from More to Jean Jacques Rousseau, from Rousseau to Saint Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Lassalle, and Karl Marx, have devoted their attention to it. The French Revolutionists tried to solve it, and the revolutionary movement of 1848 took up the problem in ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... years of age in the fifth year of Tiberius, when the Jews were expelled Rome."—Seneca's Morals, p. 11. "I was prevented[438] reading a letter which would have undeceived me."—Hawkesworth, Adv., No. 54. "If the problem can be solved, we may be pardoned the inaccuracy of its demonstration."—Booth's Introd., p. 25. "The army must of necessity be the school, not of honour, but effeminacy."—Brown's Estimate, i. 65. "Afraid of the virtue of a nation, in its opposing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the ambulance—of heart disease, the doctors said, but Susan felt it was really of the sense that to go on living was impossible. And fond of her though she was, she could not but be relieved that there was one less factor in the unsolvable problem. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... between five and twenty years of age and 31 girls under fifteen years of age—an excess of 23 boys. For a polygamous society, this excess in the number of the male sex certainly presents a puzzling problem. The statement I had from some cattlemen in mid-Florida I have thus found true, namely, that the Seminole are producing more men than women. What bearing this peculiarity will have upon the future of these Indians can only ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... Halleck and Buell thought that a favorable time had arrived for this movement, anticipating that no advance of the enemy's forces would be made to dispute the occupancy of those portions of Kentucky and Tennessee already held by the Federal forces. The great problem with Buell was to furnish supplies to his army, now some three hundred miles away from its base at Louisville, dependent during the greater part of the year on one line of road, which was subject to being ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist

... the audiences unquestionably represented vast receipts to the management. An estimate made at the time from a study of the character and size of the audiences placed the receipts in round numbers at $100,000. It was significant as bearing on the artistic problem suggested by the succession of German and Italian opera—a problem that was destined to become of paramount interest soon—that on scarcely a single Patti performance were all the orchestra stalls sold, and that there were always unsold boxes in the tier not occupied by the stockholders. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... defiantly, turning to the great detective, "I have preferred to take my trial—to allow the public the satisfaction of a solution of the problem, rather than accept the generous terms you offered ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... the north in search of a market for his cattle. The Indian agencies and mining camps of northern New Mexico and Colorado, and the Mormon settlements of Utah, were the first markets to attract attention. The problem of reaching them seemed almost hopeless of solution. Immediately to the north of them the country was trackless and practically unknown. The only thing certain about it was that it swarmed with hostile Indians. What were the conditions as to water and grass, two prime essentials to ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within him sharper than the iron one; and as it tore him, the perspiration dripped down his tallow countenance and streaked his doublet. Ofttimes he drew his sleeve across his face, but there was ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... the France which had its centre in Paris." The thirteenth century rivals the finest period of Greek art for purity, simplicity, nobility and accurate science of construction. Imagination was chastened by knowledge, but not systematised into rigid rules. Each master solved his problem in his own way, and the result was a charm, a variety, and a fertility of invention, never surpassed in the history of art. Early French sculpture is a direct descendant of Greek art, which made its way into Gaul by the Phoenician ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... solves the problem," said the midget, gleefully. "I've got your party. He's old Fisheye Gleason right here with the show. We can deal with that old buzzard as freely and as profitably as if we were in a cutthroat pawnshop. Hey, you fellows," he called to some passing laborers, "have any of you seen old ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... for all Anglo-Saxons, we do not overlook the fact that Luther's disciples, Germans and Scandinavians, are themselves being translated, or are in a state of transition. The translation of a people and of their literature or spirit clearly presents a double problem, both sides of which demand at once the most careful work. The translation of both the people and their literature should run parallel and in the same, and not in an opposite, direction. Germans and ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... her. Had it been in his power he would have thought of her in the abstract—the stage contiguous to that which he adopted: but the attempt was luckless; the Stagyrite would have faded in it. What philosopher could have set down that face of sun and breeze and nymph in shadow as a point in a problem? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... without its problems. As early as 1908 the problem of housing the stock was again causing worry, but for a few years it was solved by better arrangement of the shelving. By 1915 the situation was again difficult and approval was given for the removal of the ...
— Report of the Chief Librarian - for the Year Ended 31 March 1958: Special Centennial Issue • J. O. Wilson and General Assembly Library (New Zealand)

... elastic septum which absolutely prevents interdiffusion of matter, while it allows interchange of kinetic energy by collisions against itself? Indeed, I do not know but, that the present is the very first statement which has ever been published of this condition of the problem of equal temperatures ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... then. We don't have to say, 'Let X (a very slim X at that) equal Jack's chances, and minus Y equal Joyce's.' If we could only determine the value of the chances of Mary, we'd soon know the 'length of the whole fish.' 'Member how you moiled and toiled over that old fish problem in Ray's Algebra, to help ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... made to bring into the domain of tone vague and shifting fancies and pictures. How much further music can be made to assimilate to the other arts in directness of mental suggestion, by wedding to it the noblest forms of poetry, and making each the complement of the other, is the knotty problem which underlies the great art-controversy about which this article concerns itself. On the one side we have the claim that music is the all-sufficient law unto itself; that its appeal to sympathy is through the intrinsic sweetness of harmony and tune, and the intellect must be satisfied with what ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... books which he had to get up for lectures he was genuinely interested. The politics of Athens, the struggle between the Roman plebs and patricians, Mons Sacer and the Agrarian laws—these began to have a new meaning to him, but chiefly because they bore more or less on the great Harry Winburn problem; which problem, indeed, for him had now fairly swelled into the condition-of-England problem, and was becoming every day more and more urgent and importunate, shaking many old beliefs, and leading him whither he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... true poetry is only that which implies a mastery of spiritual things as well as of human emotion, Alfred de Vigny is assuredly one of our greatest poets, for none so well as he has realized a complete vision of the universe, no one has brought before the world with more boldness the problem of the soul and that of humanity. Under the title of poet he belongs not only to our national literature, but occupies a distinctive place in the world of intellect, with Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, among those inspired beings who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the way there seemed to be a sort of intercourse between himself and his Companion. His soul was putting forth great questions that he would some day take up in detail and go over little by little, as one will verify a problem that one has worked out. But now he was working it out, becoming satisfied in his soul that this was the only way to solve the great otherwise unanswerable problems of ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... while an organic structure is just the accumulation of those small differences which evolution has had to go through in order to achieve it. The struggle for life and natural selection can be of no use to us in solving this part of the problem, for we are not concerned here with what has perished, we have to do only with what has survived. Now, we see that identical structures have been formed on independent lines of evolution by a gradual accumulation of effects. How can accidental causes, occurring in an accidental order, be supposed ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... life, to the maintenance of which by her marriage she had committed herself. At first it had seemed the best thing for Mark; but she should have remembered that her father could not live for ever and that one day she would have to face the problem of life without his help and his hospitality. She began to imagine that the disaster of that stormy night had been contrived by God to punish her, and she prayed to Him that her chastisement should not be increased, that at least her son might be ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... since, that had we been better instructed, all this would have been simple enough; but to us ignorant lads, fresh come from England, it was a terrible problem to solve, one which grew more difficult every day. In those days, when settlers were few, and Vancouver Island just coming into notice, there was no regular steamer, only a speculative trading-vessel now and then. Still there was ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... preach or listen to a sermon; nobody shall administer or receive a sacrament, save in secret, and with the prospect before him of imprisonment or the scaffold.—With this object in mind, we do one thing at a time. There is no problem with the Church claiming to be be orthodox: its members having refused to take the oath are outlaws; one excludes oneself from an association when one repudiates the pact; they have lost their qualifications as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... isolation, in the midst of a dark gathering of old whispering cedars. They nod their heads together when the North Wind comes, and nod again and agree, and furtively grow still again, and say no more awhile. The North Wind is to them like a nice problem among wise old men; they nod their heads over it, and mutter about it all together. They know much, those cedars, they have been there so long. Their grandsires knew Lebanon, and the grandsires of these were the servants of the King of Tyre ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... my brains to outwit a pretty disorganizer; and I plotted for her sake. Married, she would be out of mischief. For Whit's sake, for Milly's sake, for mine, all of which collectively meant for the sake of the pennant, this would be the solution of the problem. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... answered than by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who remarks that "at his highest elevation the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger." Still, this is by no means a complete solution of the problem which again and again presents itself and challenges our ingenuity. Chopin and George Sand's case belongs to the small minority of loves where both parties are distinguished practitioners of ideal crafts. Great would be the mistake, however, were we to assume ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... heard the East Wind on the roof, and he recalled that the old problem of existence faced him still. He had solved it up here. His cabin was warm, he was full-fed; the squaw grubbed his living for him out of the frozen forests. He did not want to be forced to face the competition of civilized existence again. He was dirty, care-free; ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... the forty-ninth annual meeting of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society. Nearly half a century has elapsed since that little band of pioneers met in Rochester and organized that they might work out a problem that had proven too difficult for any of them to handle single handed and alone. Those men were all anxious to raise at least sufficient fruit for themselves and families. They had tried and failed. They were not willing to give up. They knew they could accomplish more by interchanging ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... instead, it has become obvious that the more carefully I had sought to reduce each question to unity, the more that question-subdivided and connected itself with other questions; and that, with the solution of each separate problem, had arisen a new set of problems which infinitely complicated the main lessons to be deduced from a study of that many-sided civilization to which, remembering the brilliant and mysterious offspring ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind. The whole problem of mutual service is the great problem of societal organization. Is it a dream, then, that all men should ever be free and equal? It is at least evident that here ethical notions have been interjected into social relations, with the result that we have been ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... of the matter reduced it to a definite problem. What was needed was some sort of protection for the screw that would keep the weed away from it and yet would allow it to work freely: and, having the case thus clearly stated, the thought presently occurred to me that I could secure this protection by building out from the stern ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... The problem of restoring the palace presented much difficulty in the impoverished state of the country, but the Bakufu did not hesitate to take the task in hand, and to issue the necessary requisitions to the feudatories of the home provinces. Sadanobu himself repaired ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... judiciary tribunal, the parliament, or any other essential component of the State. Almost all human beings possess the dramatic perception; a few possess the dramatic faculty. These few are born for the stage, and each and every generation contributes its number to the service of this art. The problem is one of selection and embarkation. Of the true actor it may be said, as Ben Jonson says of the true poet, that he is made as well as born. The finest natural faculties have never yet been known to avail without training and culture. But this is a problem which, in a great ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... extolled by public opinion as a reformer who suffered martyrdom in the cause. Yet what he has experienced and learned falls as far short of what convicts endure, as the emotions of a theater-goer at a problem play (with a tango supper awaiting him in a neighboring restaurant) fall short of the long-drawn misery and humiliation of those who undergo in actuality ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne



Words linked to "Problem" :   pons asinorum, can of worms, difficulty, riddle, hydra, puzzler, pressure point, race problem, brain-teaser, question, sticker, toughie, poser, Gordian knot, head, enigma, matter, deep water, koan, case, growing pains, conundrum, rebus, mystifier, teaser, stumper, puzzle



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