"Significance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most obvious sense, this new question of the Academy is commonplace, and fit at best to exercise a rhetorisian's skill. But the Academy, which must continue till the end in its ignorance of the revolutionary significance of its oracles, has drawn aside the curtain in its commentary. What, then, so profound has it discovered in this ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... of the significance of this play, you must bring yourself to realize that it was not merely a play, but a kind of a play; it had a name—a "musical comedy"—the meaning of which every one understood. Hundreds of such plays were written and produced, and "dramatic critics" went to ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... over the whole assembly. I did so at once, piercing everybody with my eyes. One thing alone restrained me; it was that I did not dare to fix my eyes upon certain objects. I feared the fire and brilliant significance of my looks at that moment so appreciated by everybody: and the more I saw I attracted attention, the more anxious was I to wean curiosity by my discreetness. I cast, nevertheless, a glittering ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... changing, and the changes are fraught with significance for America. Feudalism has passed; scholasticism has gone; politics, commerce, philosophy, religion, science, invention, music, art, and literature are rapidly altering. In England William and Mary pass away. Queen ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... makes a great deal of difference in many ways, Sir," laughed Buckingham, and he glanced with a significance which I did not understand at the boy who was waiting near with a weary look on his ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... fingers are common to swindlers, thieves, sexual offenders, and pickpockets. The lines on the palmar surfaces of the finger-tips are often of a simple nature as in the anthropoids. The principal lines on the palm are of special significance. Normal persons possess three, two horizontal and one vertical, but in criminals these lines are often reduced to one or two of horizontal or transverse direction, as ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... this surmise kindly. It was something to think about anyhow; something to sharpen her wits upon, just as a cat stretches her claws in the nap of the drawing-room rug. She rescued from oblivion half a dozen remarks heard during the morning, whose significance had gone over her head, and tentatively fitted them together like bits of a picture puzzle. She hadn't enough to go on but she believed there was something there. And when a little later in the afternoon, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... "nice" young man, was always ready to sing, and faute de mieux it became the fashion with the very young to like him. But there never was a tenor of any note in New York whose singing was so utterly without character or significance and who was so deficient in histrionic ability. His high and long continued favor is one of those puzzling popular freaks ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sense, a farmhouse with its out-buildings. It is the commonest of these generic prefixes. In Brittany, though it is occasionally found, its place is usually taken by Ker (Cornish Car, Welsh Caer), probably the Latin castrum, a fortified town or camp, a difference which has its historical significance. ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... dato rame che i Capitani etc., soldati fossero venuti alla pase. The significance of the word rame is obscure; as at times it means money, whence comes the vulgar phrase questo sa di rame, in order to indicate that a thing is dear, it appeared to me that I might adopt the interpretation ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... sudden vigour and significance. "If he lives!" And he sat up. "Whilst we plan and plot, and our plans and plots come to naught save to provoke the anger of my father, we might be better employed in taking ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the stripes have no special meaning or significance, except that which anyone may apply who desires to make use of his imagination, or who may become sentimental upon the subject. Many have written and commented upon it; some have said that the red stripes mean courage, others war, daring, determination, and so on, and that the ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... make a nation's laws so that I make its songs." Discuss the ethical and sociological significance of this with regard to (a) "Where do flies go in the winter-time?" (b) "I do ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... union of German philosophy with French social science. Only one double-number of this journal appeared in 1844. It contained Marx's criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right and his exposition of the social significance of the Jewish question, in the form of a review of two works ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... recalled him to a sense of his surroundings. A storm had risen, heralded by a single gust of wind, and in a few moments the steady plash of the water on the pavement was distinctly heard. I hardly know why I relate this incident; it seemed somehow to have a certain significance and relevancy which I am unable now to discern. It at least added an element of seriousness, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... seated as nearly as possible on the small of his back before the breakfast table. If mental anguish can be expressed by unkempt hair and a disordered cravat, that of Mr. Moggridge was extreme; and the untasted bloater, pushed aside and half concealed by the newspaper, was full of lurid significance. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Chopin's music, we must be careful not to ascribe to this origin too much. Indeed, the fact that the personal individuality of Chopin is as markedly differentiated, as exclusively self-contained, as the national individuality of Poland, is oftener overlooked than the master's national descent and its significance with regard to his artistic production. And now, having made the reader acquainted with the raison d'etre of this proem, I shall plunge without further preliminaries ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of hyphomycetae, algae, and schizomycetae, have been demonstrated to occur in the animal and human organism in infective diseases. Their significance increases with the increase of their capacity for development in the animal body. This depends partly upon their natural or ordinary conditions of life, but partly also, and that in a very high degree, upon their power of adaptation, which, as Darwin has shown, is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... present discontent. After making sundry ineffectual attempts to see her noble relation, she was at last admitted; and after one hour's private audience, she returned to the anxious Almeria with a countenance lengthened to the utmost stretch of melancholy significance. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... leading review, but with little result. They bedizened themselves with frippery, shrieked like parrots on all occasions and interpreted the motto of the time, "Carry On," in a sense deplorably remote from its higher significance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... safety-trigger! Stick to the two-man tug-of-war rope, when an Irish quarryman, named Bamey, has hold of the other end! Stick to him, quotha! Easier said than done—is it not? And yet you've been riding all manner of horses, on and off (mark the significance of that expression) since you were a mere kiddie. However, you have stuck to him for a good solid sixty seconds; now, one of your knees has slipped over the pad, and your stirrup is swinging loose. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... peace offering, and he stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in the Italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy, when imaginative young men find significance in trifles and food for romance everywhere. He had thought of Jo in reaching after the thorny red rose, for vivid flowers became her, and she had often worn ones like that from the greenhouse at home. The pale roses Amy gave him were the sort that the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... of Madame Polozov; if, he thought, she is anxious to impress me, to dazzle me, perhaps, who knows, she will be accommodating about the price of the estate. His heart was so full of Gemma that all other women had absolutely no significance for him; he hardly noticed them; and this time he went no further than thinking, 'Yes, it was the truth they told me; that lady's really ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Mrs. McCarter made her fame secure. It is a great picture of a thrilling time, and a series of events of historic significance. Its pages are redolent of the sweet air and wide landscapes; the pictures come and go of idyllic childhood, of growing love, of Indian danger, of jealousy, of massacre, and of the movement toward the settled life of the plains. It is a poignant and winning record of ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... says Dr. Clark; then a gold Bible; then golden plates engraved; and later metallic plates, stereotyped or embossed with golden letters.* Daniel Hendrix's recollection was that for the first few months Joe did not claim the plates any new revelation or religious significance, but simply that they were a historical record of an ancient people. This would indicate that he had possession of the "Spaulding Manuscript" before ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... me. I have never been able to induce a chair to hop after me. No turnip has consented to drop from the ceiling for me. Planchette, in her day, wrote hundreds of lines for me, but never one that was of the slightest possible significance to me, or to the universe at large. Never did a medium tell me anything that ever came to pass; though one of them once made a whole winter miserable by prophesying a death ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... uh what we was talkin' about comm' over, by cripes! I guess he'll be willin' to drive sheep, all right, when we git through with him. Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" He leaned forward in the saddle and ogled the bug-killer with horrid significance. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Dynasty from the Last War, or, as we would have counted in my time, about 200,000 A.D., official records of time were no longer kept carefully. They fell into disuse. Men began to forget years, to forget time at all. Of what significance was ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... His father's first name being Harmen, he simply took that, and discarded the Gerrit entirely, according to the custom of the time. In fact, all our Johnsons are the sons of John, and the names Peterson, Thompson and Wilson, in feudal times, had their due and proper significance. Then when we find names with a final ending of "s," such as Robbins, Larkins and Perkins, we are to understand that the owner is the son of his father. And so we find Rembrandt Harmenszoon in his later years writing his name Harmensz and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... in my ears, and I began at length to grasp its significance, which seems to have escaped me till then. "Yes," I said to myself, "it is quite natural." And with this odd impression of naturalness was mixed a feverish, impatient pleasure. It was as if I had come to Mistra on purpose, and that I was ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... a double development brought about by the war in Europe, and the nation has not yet realized its significance. Within a few years, experts predict the negro population of the North will be tripled. It's your problem, then, or it will be when the ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... a scene of no little significance was taking place at Las Palmas. Ed Austin was entertaining callers, and these were none other than Tad Lewis ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the full formula:—"Yusuf took it and brake the seal (fazza-hu) and read it and comprehended its contents and purport and significance: and, after perusing it," etc. These forms, decies repetita, may go down with an Eastern audience, but would be intolerable in a Western volume. The absence of padding, however, reduces the story almost to a patchwork of doggerel ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... institutions and usages of the church the support of the state, Protestants are following in the steps of papists. Nay, more, they are opening the door for the papacy to regain in Protestant America the supremacy which she has lost in the Old World. And that which gives greater significance to this movement is the fact that the principal object contemplated is the enforcement of Sunday observance,—a custom which originated with Rome, and which she claims as the sign of her authority. It is the spirit of the papacy,—the spirit of conformity to worldly customs, the veneration for human ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... was produced at Covent Garden. George III. was king, and the allusions to the squabbles of his father and grandfather were not, perhaps, supposed to be any longer of the remotest concern or significance to anybody. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... failed to understand the full significance of Shakespeare's line: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... along the dusty way, once a narrow trail worn by the patient feet of that gentle and great padre, Junipero Serra,—a trail from the San Gabriel Valley to the shores of Monterey. A narrow trail then, but, even then, to him it was broad in its potential significance of the dawn of Grace upon the mountain shores of ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... before me, and only the cordiality of your welcome and the pleasure I have felt in being here would have allowed me to stay so long. You have been wonderfully kind, and perhaps the fact that I was here when war broke out will lend a special significance to our friendship ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... had over shot the mark by half a mile. In the street over which stood love's star, the hero thundered his presence at a door, and evoked a flying housemaid, who knew not Mrs. Berry. The hero attached significance to the fact that his instincts should have betrayed him, for he could have sworn to that house. The door being shut he stood ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues. What is the significance of its Greek name, meaning a lion's tail? Let no one suggest, by a far-stretched metaphor, that our grandmothers, in Revolutionary days, enjoyed pulling it to vent ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... explaining to Jimmie the inner significance of terrific world-events. Russia was in the midst of a gigantic offensive, which was meant to overwhelm Austria; England at the same time was hurling in her new armies on the Somme; for these two giant movements they wanted shells—millions and millions ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... a year has elapsed since the CONTINENTAL was first established, it has during that time acquired a strength and a political significance elevating it to a position far above that previously occupied by any publication of the kind in America. In proof of which assertion we call attention to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in the sand. They showed me the way to find you," he said, trying vainly to speak in a commonplace tone. But somehow his voice seemed to take on a deep significance. He looked at her shyly, half fearing she must feel it, and then murmuring something about looking after ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... missing man. The captain suggested that the neighbours should be notified and a search-party should start out at once. As this seemed the only thing to do, Jasper hurried to the village and aroused Andy Forbes from his slumbers. It took the storekeeper several minutes to grasp the significance of the affair, and Jasper ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... without any of its cares or interruptions. And this, let me say here, is the great charm of the characteristic English inn; it has a domestic, homelike air. "Taking mine ease at mine inn" has a real significance in England. You can take your ease and more; you can take real solid comfort. In the first place, there is no bar-room, and consequently no loafers or pimps, or fumes of tobacco or whiskey; then there is no landlord or proprietor or hotel clerk to lord it over ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... somewhat disturbed under the circumstances, but he believes the boy is honest, and he believes young Collins must in some way have been mistaken in what he imagines he heard. Or, if he was not mistaken, that Murphy was dreaming, and the words had no significance. ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... of labor, and lower the prices of the necessaries of life." The Wall Street Journal, a stock gamesters' publication, in commenting upon Lord Avebury's speech, said: "These words were spoken by an aristocrat and a member of the most conservative body in all Europe. That gives them all the more significance. They contain more valuable political economy than is to be found in most of the books. They sound a note of warning. Take heed, gentlemen of the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... nuisance, of course. But to see only that side of him is to think, as the shepherd boy piped, 'as though' you will 'never grow old.' Does he never appeal to you with any more human significance, a significance tearful and uncomfortably symbolic? Or are you so entirely that tailor's fraction of manhood, the fin de siecle type, that your ninth part does not include a ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the individual loses his significance and becomes, so to speak, the slave of the reproductive cells. These are the important and essential and also the undying parts of the organism. Like raveled threads whose branches separate and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... of the country, all had largely possessed the advantages of a popular government; and where any other than a republican government for the future was wellnigh impossible. For men to address each other as "citizen," as if the word had the new significance in America that it had just gained in France; to swear eternal fidelity to liberty, equality, and fraternity, as if these were lately discovered rights which had been denied the common people for ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... are now trying these Stewarts," he replied, with great significance. "If we should ever come to be trying you, it will be very different; and I shall press these very questions that I am now willing to glide upon. But to resume: I have it here in Mr. Mungo Campbell's precognition ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ever finds fault with anything I say at this table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... say that he obeys Necessity, but his personified companions are Strength and Force, and of these Force appears only as the dumb attendant of Strength. Addisons greatest critics had something to learn when they were blind to the significance of the contrast between Visible Strength at the opening of this poem, and the close with sublime prophecy of an unseen Power of the Future that disturbs Zeus on his throne, and gathers his ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... described more correctly as a method for propagating unusual nut trees, and it opens a vista of distant horizon in horticulture. The discovery was due to an accident, and I claim no credit beyond recognizing the significance of an odd phenomenon. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... his life could never again be the same. She had held out her arms to him—and he, cold, churlish, unfeeling brute, had let her shame herself, fighting for her happiness, for the joy that is a woman's divine right. He had been blind; he had not understood the significance of her gracious action; he had never realized until too late, what it must have cost her, what heartburning shame and scorn his refusal brought upon her. If she ever looked tenderly at him again with her great eyes; or leaned toward him with her beautiful arms outstretched, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... significance to notice with what resentment this point of view is met in certain quarters. When I first began to write on revolution a well-known London publisher said to me, "Remember that if you take an anti-revolutionary line you will have the whole literary world against you." This appeared to me extraordinary. ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... sank within him, as, for the first time, the real significance of that which he had done in carefully guiding the rower on to the old rotten pile came home. A cold chill ran through him, and, for the moment, he clung, speechless and ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... withheld the expression of his opinion; the fate of governments was involved in it; cabinets were overthrown and reconstructed in the throes and tumult of the strife, and for the first time for a long period the Sovereign personally interposed in public transactions with a significance of character, which made the working classes almost believe that the privileged had at last found a master, and the unfranchished regained their natural chief. The mean position which the Saxon multitude occupied as distinguished ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... connivance at vice and crime is disregarded by the law, rise and take position in society-not only entering into more respectable business-but joining in that phalanx who are seeking the life-blood of the old Southerner, and like a silent moth, working upon his decay. There is a deep significance in the answer so frequently given in Charleston to the interrogatory, "Who lives in that splendid dwelling-it seems to have been the mansion of a ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... said I, as I offered her my arm, feeling quite sure that she had not lost the significance of my last words, for women find a meaning ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... vibrating quality of the last words. She seemed to be talking low of some wonderful enchantment, in mysterious terms of special significance. He thought that if she only could talk to him in some unknown tongue, she would enslave him altogether by the sheer beauty of the sound, suggesting infinite depths of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... that she soon inwardly guessed the significance of her friend's strange expression; she was quick and observant, and he was sometimes extremely guileless. But the evenings went on as before, and their conversations were just as poetic and interesting. And behold on one occasion at nightfall, after the most lively and ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... going to be to take fright at shadows. Evidently the young man was a salesman, and his apparent pursuit of me had been merely a coincidence in corner turnings. And in the recoil from the apprehensive extreme I refused to attach any significance to the fact that he was purchasing a ticket to the same distant town to which I had but now paid my ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... lack-luster absence of interest. Such a calm reception was uncanny. The trailers felt sure that in a moment more the dogs would fall into accusing excitement. Logically, these men should be waiting to receive them behind barricaded doors. There must be some hidden significance. Possibly, it was an invitation to walk into ambuscade. No doubt, unseen rifles covered their approach, and the shooting of Purvy was only the inaugural step to a bloody and open outbreak of the war. After a whispered ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... able to increase the list provisionally to thirty-three,[677] all except hydrogen metals. This rapid success was due to his adoption of the test of length in lieu of that of strength in the comparison of lines. He measured their relative significance, in other words, rather by their persistence through a wide range of temperature, than by their brilliancy at any one temperature. The distinction was easily drawn. Photographs of the electric arc, in which any given ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... called by my name, appears to contain an allusion to the Christians and Mohammedans, who are the only nations besides the Jews who invoke, the name of Jehovah, and profess faith in his prophets. There are not a few passages in the prophets, which have a significance at present, which they could not have had at the time ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... the Russian Government during the war, although the censorship was enforced so rigidly that the significance of the rapid shifts was apparent. Vague reports reached the outside world of high councilors of State who were obstructing instead of assisting the work of carrying on the war, and the strength of German influence at Petrograd. The most conspicuous case of this sort was that of General ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Clotilde was accused of not having gave a stir of deep gratitude. Dear, pretty little mother! Not only knowing full well the existence of this swelling heart and the significance, to-day, of its every warm pulsation, but kindly covering up the discovery with make-believe reproaches. The tears started in her ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... medium of language. We must make a distinction, however, between the comic EXPRESSED and the comic CREATED by language. The former could, if necessary, be translated from one language into another, though at the cost of losing the greater portion of its significance when introduced into a fresh society different in manners, in literature, and above all in association of ideas. But it is generally impossible to translate the latter. It owes its entire being to the structure of the sentence or to the choice of the words. It does not set forth, by means of language, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... got some news for all my friends." She waited smilingly for them to join the others; then with a gesture which included every member of the household, she proceeded: "The pink tea, I want you all to know, had a double significance, and first, of course, it was to celebrate the anniversary of Brother Abe's sojourn with us; but next it was my farewell to the Home." Here Blossy gurgled and gave the man at her right so coy a glance that Samuel's face flamed red and he hung his head lower to one side than ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... mulled it over and agreed that Captain Bonnet must have found the Revenge unready to weigh anchor or he would have engaged the brig ere this. Perhaps there was not breeze enough for either vessel to move. Another hour of this stressful tedium and they heard a sound of sharp significance. It was the lap-lap of water against the vessel's side. No more than the thickness of the planking was between them and this tinkling sea, and Joe exclaimed, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... even for a single season there might be individuals here whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have a personal aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for most persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... two kinds of accent are recognized, the Musical accent, and the Poetic, or Verbal, accent. The first appertains to the domain of sound; the second, to the domain of significance. The first, for aesthetic reasons, throws into relief certain tones of a musical phrase; the second brings into prominence the sentiment underlying the poem or text. Note, also, that in spoken declamation, accent applies to a syllable only; ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... much significance as he dared into his last question; but Gladys apparently did not ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... natural parts, do consist;—that next to this and his Christian-name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes of all;—that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the Causa sina qua non, and without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,—was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... was absolute enjoyment, and of a kind without drawback. Scholarship must be his true element and study: the deep universal study of the sisterhood of science that the University offered was his veritable vocation. Surely it was not without significance that the ring that shone on his finger betrothed him to Esclairmonde, the Light of the World; for though in person the maiden was never to be his own, she was the emblem to him of the pure virgin light of truth and wisdom ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... must be changed to those of the Chinese ideographs; or the sounds of the Chinese ideographs must alone be taken (irrespective of their meaning), and with them a phonetic syllabary must be formed. Both of these devices were employed by a Japanese scholar of early times. Sometimes disregarding the significance of the ideographs altogether, he used them simply as representing sounds, and with them built up pure Japanese words; at other times, he altered the sounds of Japanese words to those of their Chinese equivalents and then wrote them frankly ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... this fact an explanation will be attempted in a future chapter. But the whole subject of the differences of the sounds produced under different states of the mind is so obscure, that I have succeeded in throwing hardly any light on it; and the remarks which I have made, have but little significance. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... wonderful process is, that the characters are all that they appear to be, and a vast deal more besides: there is food for endless thought and reflection in them: beneath and behind the surface, there is all the substance that the surface promises or has room for,—an inexhaustible stock of wealth and significance beyond what is directly seen; so that the more they are looked into the more they are found ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... after the letters had been found upon his arm. He did not appear to be at all confused by the discovery and the triumph of the cavalry officer's argument. He punched Somers in the side with his elbow; but the latter was unable to divine the significance of this movement. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... and makes somebody ill. In this kampong was a young hornbill which was quite domesticated and frequently came to rest on the top of my tent. It often fought the hens and even the dogs, which was an amusing sight, but would carry disquieting significance to the Dayak who allowed himself to laugh. The lieutenant from Long Kai possessed a very tame wah-wah which had accompanied him on a visit here. The natives told me that a child had become ill because she could ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... is of slightly more significance; and intimates, not being quite alone in its kind, a questionable habit or method the Crown-Prince must have had of dealing with Clerical Persons hereabouts when they proved troublesome. Here are no fewer than three such Persons, or Parsons, of the Ruppin Country, who got mischief by him. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the enforced uniformity of worship throughout the colony in the early years of the eighteenth century were found in a few meetings of persecuted and vilified Quakers and Baptists. The government and clergy had little notion of the significance of a slender stream of Scotch-Irish emigration which, as early as 1720, began to flow into the valley of the Shenandoah. So cheap a defense against the perils that threatened from the western frontier it would have been folly to discourage by odious religious proscription. The reasonable anxiety ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... fell before the Deluge, as we are bound to conclude, the rainbow must have been then as now. The usual practice of commentators is to explain this portion of the narrative by assuming that the rainbow was visible before the covenant with Noah, but only after the covenant had a special significance. But, as Colenso observes, the writer of the story supposes the rainbow was then first set in the clouds, and is evidently accounting for the origin of this beautiful phenomenon, which might well appear supernatural to ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the development of the earth, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and geysers, are treated much more briefly than is customary. This has given space for the extended discussion of matters of greater significance. For the first time an adequate discussion of the leading modern conceptions concerning the origin and early development of the earth is ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... a special significance, which is almost implied in their form, but is also distinct from it. Mr. Browning has made them the vehicle for most of the reasonings and reflections which make up so large a part of his imaginative life: whether presented ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a thicket of Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after making a tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the grandeur and significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious brightness stretched across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into all the spiky irregularities of the summits. ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... inequality and of our lack of civil freedom. The problem of Jewish equal rights in Russia is the problem of the equal rights of all our citizens in general. That is why the anti-Semitical parties in Russia have a larger political significance and importance than the anti-Semitical parties of the West. In our country they almost coincide with anti-constitutional parties, in general, and anti-Semitism is the banner of the old regime, of which we still struggle in ...
— The Shield • Various
... hunger in the pretty certain knowledge that in a few hours he would actually behold his wonder-woman in at least one of her daring exploits. Shipwreck! Perhaps she would be all but drowned. He hastened back to the pool that had now acquired this high significance. The carpenters were still puttering about on the scaffold. He saw that platforms for the cameras had been built ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the strangers openly carried pistols in their belts, which was not of overwhelming significance in such times in such a region, but they did not have the look of mountaineers riding on peaceful business, and he reined his horse to the very edge of the road that ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... list of the wealth heaped up by the old merchant in the East, and he became a miser: had he not to provide for a second lifetime? His views of life were the more profound and penetrating; he grasped its significance, as a whole, the better, because he saw it across a grave. All men, all things, he analyzed once and for all; he summed up the Past, represented by its records; the Present in the law, its crystallized form; the Future, revealed by religion. He took spirit and matter, and flung them ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... Nature there is a spiritual reality—an "I"—just as behind the outward appearance of the man which the artist-midge sees there is the "I" of the man. And by cultivating this sense—that is, by training and developing our capacity to see deeper into the heart of Nature, see more significance and meaning in each shade and change of her features, and read more understandingly what is going on deep within her soul—we shall enable ourselves to see a ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... said it was? But, anyhow, it shows interest. He must be rather keen—I mean interested—in me. It's all very well to say it means nothing, but for a man nowadays to sit down and write a long letter all about nothing at all, it must have some significance. Look how easily he might have rung up! I know you're afraid of encouraging me too much, and it's very kind of you—but I must confess I do think that letters mean a great deal. Think of the trouble he's taken. And there's a great deal about ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... depreciation apt to be perceptible. It is, therefore, in this case, a great advantage to be the first hand. The world-threatening power of Spain, in the seventeenth century, was very essentially promoted by the American gold and silver mines;(886) nor is it a matter of less significance to-day, that the great mineral wealth of the world belongs to Siberia, California and Australia; that is, especially to Russia and to countries colonized by Great Britain. Further, as to the classes into which a nation is divided, it was only the crown, the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... meaning and significance of a great historic event more aptly voiced. The natives beheld in the advent of English rule the promise of ampler liberty and enlightenment under Victoria the Good; but the hearts of the soldiers were set on the speedy capture of Pretoria, as the crowning outcome ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... we will, this manner of understanding the word slang is an extension which every one will not admit. For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient and precise, circumscribed and determined significance, and we restrict slang to slang. The veritable slang and the slang that is pre-eminently slang, if the two words can be coupled thus, the slang immemorial which was a kingdom, is nothing else, we repeat, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... are many subjects upon which her opinion, once formed, she would never change, I fancy,' and he smiled with a significance which ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... held, therefore, that we had no right to that Territory. So you see, Allen, that the words of Mr. Gouldburn, on behalf of the British commissioners, which I have quoted to you from Albert Gallatin's minutes of the conference, had a far deeper significance than our commissioners could penetrate. These words were meant to lay the foundation for a claim on the Louisiana Purchase, entirely external to the provisions of the Treaty of Ghent. And in that way, the British government was signing a treaty with one hand in ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... thing that pleases her is the thing that she will hold fast. And yet I do not doubt that the most important things are always the best remembered; only we must learn that the real importance of what we see and hear in the world is to be measured at last by its meaning, its significance, its intimacy with the heart of our heart and the life of our life. And when we find a little token of the past very safely and imperishably kept among our recollections, we must believe that memory has made no mistake. It is because that little thing has ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... tyrannical exactions from them, the king promising to restore order and the "law of Eadward," the old constitution of the realm, with the changes which his father had introduced. His marriage gave a significance to these promises which the meanest English peasant could understand. Edith, or Matilda, was the daughter of King Malcolm of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister of Eadgar AEtheling. She had been brought ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... laugh-maker. Every passage in the plays that is not artistically immaculate, that does not conform to the uttermost canons of dramatic art, is unequivocally damned as "unecht." In his Introduction (p. 4) Weise is truly eloquent in painting the times and significance of our poet. With momentary insight he says: "Man hat an ihm eine immer frische und nie versiegende Fundgrabe des aechten Volkswitzes." But this is soon marred by utterances such as (p. 14): "Faende ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... amazing swiftness she emptied her laundry bag on the bed, covered the contents with her eiderdown, spread out two dainty sets of immaculate French underwear, and was seated with a darning-basket and a pair of stockings in her hand, before the astonished Judith could take in the significance of ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... Banks is a familiar expression to most of us, but perhaps few clearly understand the significance of the term, which is applied to a remarkable plateau at the western extremity of the archipelago, occupying a space between two and three hundred miles long, and about one third as wide. These banks, as they are called, rise almost perpendicularly from an unfathomable depth of water, and are ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and significance, filling the doorway in ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the people of Otaheite, seen by Cook, was surmised by him to have a religious significance, as it presented in many instances "squares, circles, crescents, and ill-designed representations of men and dogs." Every one of these people was tattooed upon reaching majority. According to Carl Bock, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... recognized. The outcome of the long struggle with Prussia, which in 1866 finally broke the spell, and the proclamation of the German empire in 1871 left the title of emperor of Austria stripped of everything but a purely territorial significance. It had, moreover, by the compact with Hungary of 1867, ceased even fully to represent the relation of the emperor to all his dominions; and the title which had been devised to cover the whole ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... quite unconscious of the far-reaching moral and social significance of much that she describes. Many of the incidents introduced are such as imagination could of itself never suggest, in such an order and connection. There is no mark of any conscious seeking for dramatic effect. The moods that the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that turned out to be "the gangway," of which you read and hear so much. I had always associated "the gangway" with a plank along which you walked to somewhere—perhaps on to the Treasury Bench. But it is only a small passage like a narrow aisle in a church. There is a good deal of significance about this gangway, for anybody who sits below it is supposed to be of an independent turn of mind, and not to be capable of purchase by Ministers present or prospective. Thus all the Irish members sit below the gangway, and so do Mr. Macdonald ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... that the archduke, being a vassal of Spain, could not bind that power by his own signature, and that there was no proof that the king would renounce his pretended rights to the provinces. If he affected to do so, it would only be to put the republic to sleep. He referred, with much significance, to the late proceedings of the Admiral of Arragon at Emmerich, who refused to release that city according to his plighted word, saying roundly that whatever he might sign and seal one day he would not hesitate absolutely to violate on the next if the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this word conveyed to the ancients any special architectural significance is a difficult one, and some writers hold that the name betokened only the use of the building, others that it suggested also a certain form. Our knowledge of the ancient basilica as a civil structure is derived primarily from Vitruvius, and we learn about it also from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... out his bargain. Lady Deane was hurried on, leaving Marseilles, with its varied types of humanity and its profound social significance, practically unexplored; Aries and Amphitheatre, in spite of the beckoning "star," were dropped out of the programme, and the next day found the party at Avignon. And now they were once more for a moment in harmony. Dora could spare twenty-four hours; Lady Deane and the General were mollified ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... know. And why would you submit to this bondage? Simply because a person in a black coat and a white collar has mumbled certain passages over you—passages which have neither meaning nor, to an intelligent person, significance. I would not take the trouble of going through such a foolish ceremony, but I would take a great deal of ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... times (the most stable, the least hurried) the date at which general appreciation comes is a matter of chance, and to-day the presentation of any achieved work is like the reading of Keats to a football crowd. It is of no significance whatsoever to English Letters whether one of its glories be appreciated at the moment it issues from the press or ten years later, or twenty, or fifty. Further, after a very small margin is passed, a margin of a few hundreds at the most, ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Goosebridge'; which said, Giosefo was on like wise removed, without delay, from the king's presence and finding Melisso awaiting him without, told him that which he had had for answer. Thereupon, pondering Solomon's words and availing to apprehend therefrom neither significance nor profit whatsoever for their occasions, they set out to return home, as deeming themselves flouted. After journeying for some days, they came to a river, over which was a fine bridge, and a caravan of pack-mules and sumpter-horses being in act to pass, it behoved them tarry till such time as ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in Cuba continues without any marked change in the relative advantages of the contending forces. The insurrection continues, but Spain has gained no superiority. Six years of strife give to the insurrection a significance which can not be denied. Its duration and the tenacity of its adherence, together with the absence of manifested power of suppression on the part of Spain, can not be controverted, and may make some positive steps on the part of other powers a matter ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... spread, Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius'? what Capella's? What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what boundless aggregate of all? What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in you? what fluid, vast identity, Holding the universe with all its parts as one—as ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... nothing else could, and insurpassably render the New World credible. At the same time they somehow bring a lump of pity and piety into the throat at the thought of the things he did and suffered. They bring him from history and make him at home in the beholder's heart, and there seems a mystical significance in the fact that the volume most abounding in marginalia ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... which hosts of scholars still devote their lives. Painting, sculpture, music, poetry, have attempted their highest flights under its inspiration. From countless pulpits its moral and religious truths are expounded, week after week, and on every great occasion of national significance,—in whatever part of Christendom it may occur,—the Songs of Zion are awakened as the fittest expressions of the prevailing sentiment. The Psalter is the most wonderful of existing books,—at home alike in the palace of the king and the cottage ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... new significance has been given to this flag. Heretofore, the navy has been the symbol of our power and the emblem of our liberty, but now it speaks of humanity and of a noble sympathy for the oppressed of all nations. The home squadron everywhere, to give protection ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... there are four principal movements of chess, these answer to the four physical temperaments, Cold, Warm, Dry, and Wet, which are ruled by their respective planets; and thus each piece on the board is made to have its peculiar significance in relation with the stars. It is further shewn, that chess-playing is remedial against many of the lesser bodily ailments; 'and no illness is more grievous than hunger and thirst, yet both of these, when the mind is engaged in chess, are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... great faith in them for that purpose. To wean them from their heathen customs, Christian amulets and charms had to be substituted, or, as was sometimes the case, the heathen fetich was continued, but with a Christian significance. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... dark drifting of his mind, all the constellations of love and labor and life shut off by the black mass of nimbus. His identity became lost to all order; the forces of his being seemed in some process of fermentation. His hours alone were animate with psychic experiences, but he attached no significance to them, because he believed them the direct result of physical weakness. Again and again he turned upon himself fiercely, discovering that an hour had passed, while he had been tranced in strange attention for the recurrence of some voice in his brain. Angrily, he would ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... oppressed nations of Europe. So long as the German Social Democracy permits the working masses to be brought to the battlefield in the interests of Imperialism, the action of the Bolsheviks is not the work for Socialism but for German Tsarism. I do not undervalue the significance and the greatness of the Russian Revolution: it is the German Social Democrats who fail to perform their moral duty in this war and do not comprehend ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... but scantily peopled region will soon become, through recent efforts of the Peruvian and Brazilian governments to make it accessible and colonise it, of far higher importance to the nations of Northern Europe than it has been hitherto. The full significance of the title, the "largest river in the world," which we are all taught in our schoolboy days to apply to the Amazons, without having a distinct idea of its magnitude, will then become apparent ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... of great cities become buried in the dust of ages. Who then would dare to arrogate to any art an unchanging place in the scheme of the world's development, or would condemn it because its efforts fade and pass? Nay, more; has even the tale that is told no significance in after years? Can such not stir, when it is worth the telling, the hearts of men, to whom it comes as an echo from the past? Have not those tales remained most vital and most widely known which are told and told again and again, face to face and heart to heart, when the teller ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... the words contained some meaning that did not appear upon the surface. This significance struck him as so ambiguous that when he went aboard the Yankee he confided as much of his suspicions as he saw fit to his second in command, Lieutenant Underwood. As night descended he had a double watch set and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle |
